Richard was a-crouch beside me in this peeping reconnaissance, and I could feel him trembling in impatient eagerness.

“It should be easy enough—­what think you?” he whispered; and then, with a sudden grasp upon my wrist:  “You are cool and steady-nerved, John Ireton; I swear you do not love her as I do!”

“Nay, I grant you that, Dick,” said I, making sure that his excitement would obscure the double meaning in the admission.  And then I added, sincerely enough:  “She has never given me the right to love her at all.”

“God help her at this pass!” he said, more to himself than to me; and then he would go in a breath from blessing Margery to cursing Ephraim Yeates for this fresh delay.

It was Uncanoola who broke in upon the muttered malediction.

“Wah!  Captain Jennif’ cuss plenty heap, like missionary medicine-man.  Look-see!  Uncanoola no can find white squaw horse yonder.  Mebbe Captain Jennif’ see ’um, hey?”

At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they were nowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire.  The Catawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appeared to be; then he set the doubt in words.  “Chelakee heap slick.  Sleep only one eye, mebbe, hey?  Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep both eye on war-path!”

Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was within arm’s reach before we heard him.  Dick had said I was over-cool, but the old man’s ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkle to my fingers’ ends.

“How will it be, Eph?” Dick queried, hotly eager to be at work.  “We can make it across?  Never say we can’t pass that bit of still water, man!”

But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.

“I reckon ez how we’ve got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap’n Dick.  She ain’t making any fuss about it, but she’s a-slipping along like greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful.  I ain’t saying we mought n’t swim her and come out somewheres this side o’ Dan’l Boone’s country; but we’ll make it a heap quicker by projec’ing ’round till we find the ford where them varmints made out to cross.”

“God!” said Dick, deep in his throat; “more time to be killed!  By—­”

The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of the encampment opposite, but at Dick’s outbreak he fell back quickly and clapped a hand on the lips of cursing.

“Hist!  Lookee over yonder, will ye!” he cut in.  And then in a whisper meant for no ear but mine:  “The Lord be marciful to that little gal, Cap’n John; we’ve fooled our chance away—­the game’s afoot, and we ain’t in it!”

I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw a handful of dry branches on the dying fire.  But on the instant the dry wood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what the keener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner.  In the shadowy background of the surrounding forest a dozen horsemen were converging in orderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the dry branches their leader gave the command to charge.