Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that most godless day, would say ’twas the old borderer’s way of swearing; that since he left out the oaths in common speech,—­as, truly, he did,—­he would fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast upon his knees.  Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I have said; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as the sword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out of place.

It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to plead piteously for instant action.  Yeates thought it still over-early; but when Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote to me.

“What say ye, Cap’n John?  Your’n will be the next oldest head, and I reckon it hain’t been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this here purty gal o’ Gilbert Stair’s.”

Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you have not yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is to weigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable to strike too soon as too late.  This weakness was mine, and in that evil moment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my old field-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on toward the dawn.

Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with little good-will.

“I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I’d go!” he asserted, angrily.  “Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you’ll rue whilst you live.  Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I’m no soldier-lawyer to argue them down.  But something better than your damnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck—­that these very present seconds are priceless.”  Whereupon he flung himself face down in the grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fully over and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance.

Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, the old borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neck of a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour’s blind groping through the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this time precisely opposite the Indians’ lodge fire on the other side.

Here there was a little pause for three of us while Ephraim Yeates crept down the bank to try with his sounding-pole what chance we had of crossing.

Measured by what could be seen from our covert, the narrow width of quick water seemed the last of the many obstacles.

Lulled to security, as we guessed, by the apparent success of their ruse to throw us off the scent, six of the Cherokees were lying feet to fire like the spokes of a wheel for which the fitful blaze was the hub.  The seventh man was squatted before a small tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which, as we took it, would be the sleeping quarters of the captives.  Whilst all the others lay stiff and stark as if wrapped in soundest sleep, this sentry guard, too, it seemed, was scarcely more than half awake, for as we looked, his gun was slipping from the hollow of his arm and he was nodding to forgetfulness.