“That’s the kind o’ talk!” was the old man’s comment.  “Now we’ll set to work in sure-enough arnest.  Ez I said a spell back, my stummick is crying cupboard till I can’t make out to hear my brain a-sizzling.  Maybe you took notice o’ me a-praying down yonder that the good Lord’d vouchsafe to give us scalps and provender.  For our onfaithfulness He’s seed fit to withhold the one; but maybe we’ll find a raven ’r two, or a widder’s mite ’r meal-bar’l, somewheres in this howling wilderness, yit.”

So saying, he summoned the Catawba with a low whistle, and when Uncanoola joined us, told him to stay with Jennifer whilst we should make another effort to find the ford.

“There’s nobody like an Injun for a nuss when a man’s chin-deep into trouble,” quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way cautiously along the margin of the swift little river.  “If Cap’n Dick rips and tears and pulls the grass up by the roots, the chief’ll only say, ‘Wah!’ If he sits up and cusses till he’s black in the face, the chief’ll say, ‘Ugh!’ And that’s just about all a man hankers for when his sore’s a-running in the night season, and all Thy waters have gone over his head.  Selah!”

Now you are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far beyond my comprehension.  Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something he had lost.

“Right about here-away is where they made out to cross,” he announced; “the whole enduring passel of ’em, ez I reckon—­our seven varmints and the hoss-captain’s powder train.  Give me the heft o’ your shoulder till we take the water and projec’ ’round a spell on t’other side.”

We squared ourselves, wholly by the sense of touch, with the river’s edge, locked arms for the better bracing against the swift current, and so essayed the ford.  It was no more than thigh deep, and though the water lashed and foamed over the shoal like a torrent in flood, there was a clean bottom and good footing.  Once safe across, we turned our faces down-stream, and in a little time came to the deserted glade with the embers of the kidnappers’ fire glowing dully in the midst.

Here a sign of some later visitants than Falconnet’s horsemen set us warily on our guard.  The tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which had been left undisturbed by the sham rescuers, had vanished.

“Umph!  The redskins have been back to make sure o’ what they left behind,” said Yeates, in a whisper.  “I jing! that’s jest the one thing I was a-hoping they’d forget to do.  I reckon ez how that spiles our last living chance o’ finding anything that mought help slack off on the belly-pinch.”

So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune favored us.  When we had found the covert in the bushes where the two horses had been concealed we lighted upon a precious prize.  ’Twas a bag of parched corn in the grain; some share of the provision of the captive party overlooked by those who had returned to gather up the leavings.