’Twas the old borderer who took the initiative in the swift retreat, and we followed his lead like well-drilled soldiers.  A crook in the stream, and the thickset underwood, screened us for the moment from the basilisk eyes; and in a twinkling we had rolled one after another into the mimic torrent and were quickly swept down to its mouth.

Here death lay in wait for us in the mad plungings of the main river; but we made shift to catch at the overhanging branches of the willows in passing, to draw ourselves out, to scramble up the gorge and to gain a great boulder on the mountain side whence we could look down upon the scene of our late surprisal.

By this we saw, from the wings, as it were, the setting of the stage for a tragedy which might have been ours.  One by one a score of heads with painted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth.  One by one the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching figures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward the lower valley.

Ephraim Yeates chuckled under his breath and smote softly upon his thigh.

“They tell ez how the good Lord has a mighty tender care for chillern and simples,” he whispered.  “Whenst we was a-coming a-rampaging up the trace a hour ‘r two ago, I saw the moccasin track o’ that there spy, and was too dad-blame’ biggity in my own consate to ax what it mought mean.”

“What spy?” says Dick, matching the hunter’s low whisper.

“Why, the varmint that tracked me back from here ’twixt dawn and daybreak, to be sure.  He waited till we broke camp and then took out up here ahead of us to tell his chief ’twas e’ena’most time to set the trap for three white simples and a red one.  Friends, I’m a-telling ye plain that the sperrit’s a-moving me mighty powerful to get down on my hunkers and—­”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t do it here and now!” gasped Dick.  “Let’s get out of this spider’s-web while we may.”

The old hunter postponed his prayerful motion, most reluctantly, as it would seem, and led the way in a silent withdrawal from the dangerous neighborhood of the ambushment.  When we had pushed on somewhat higher up the gorge and stood on the confines of the upland valley for which it served as the approach, there was a halt for a council of war.

Since it was now evident that the powder convoy was encamped in some hidden gorge or valley to which the cavern of the underground stream was one of the approaches, ’twas plain that we must climb to some height whence we could command a wider view.

We were all agreed that the cavern entrance could not have been used by the entire company:  this though the conclusion left the vanishing trail an unsolved riddle.  For if the women could have been dragged through the low-springing arch of the waterway, we knew the horses could not—­to say nothing of the certain destruction of the powder cargo in such a passage.