“Onto the hosses with this here Injun-meat, ez quick ez the loving Lord’ll let ye!” was the sharp command.  “There’s a whole clanjamfrey o’ the varmints a-coming down the trace, and I reckon ez how we’d better scratch gravel immejitly, if not sooner!”

XXVI

WE TAKE THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE

Luckily for us the new danger was approaching from the westward.  So, by dint of the maddest hurryings we got the bodies of the three Cherokees hoist upon the horses, and were able to efface in part the signs of the late encounter before the band of riders coming down the Indian path was upon us.  But there was no time to make an orderly retreat.  At most we could only withdraw a little way into the wood, halting when we were well in cover, and hastily stripping coats and waistcoats to muffle the heads of the horses.

So you are to conceive us waiting with nerves upstrung, ready for fight or flight as the event should decide, stifling in such pent-up suspense as any or all of us would gladly have exchanged for the fiercest battle.  Happily, the breath-scanting interval was short.  From behind our thicket screen we presently saw a file of Indian horsemen riding at a leisurely footpace down the path.  Ephraim Yeates quickly named these new-comers for us.

“‘Tis about ez I allowed—­some o’ the Tuckaseges a-scouting down to hold a powwow with the hoss-captain.  Now, then; if them sharp-nosed ponies o’ their’n don’t happen to sniff the blood—­”

The hope was dashed on the instant by the sudden snorting and shying of two or three of the horses in passing, and we laid hold of our weapons, keying ourselves to the fighting pitch.  But, curiously enough, the riders made no move to pry into the cause.  So far from it, they flogged the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly; and thus in a little time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty forest was ours to keep or break as we chose.

The old frontiersman was the first to speak.

“Well, friends, I reckon ez how we mought ez well thank the good Lord for all His marcies afore we go any furder,” he would say; and he doffed his cap and did it forthwith.

It was as grim a picture as any limner of the weird could wish to look upon.  The twilight shadows were empurpling the mountains and gathering in dusky pools here and there where the trees stood thickest in the valley.  The hush of nature’s mystic hour was abroad, and even the swiftly flowing river, rushing sullenly along its rocky bed no more than a stone’s cast beyond the Indian path, seemed to pretermit its low thunderings.  There was never a breath of air astir in all the wood, and the leaves of the silver poplar that will twinkle and ripple in the lightest zephyr hung stark and motionless.