“’Tis a thing to be done, and I am with you, Dick,” said I. This before Ephraim Yeates could object.  “Should there be need for any, two blades will be better than one.  If it come to blows and we are killed or taken, Yeates and the chief must make the shift to do without our help.”

As you would guess, the old hunter demurred to this halving of our slender force, but we over-persuaded him.  If all went well, we were to rendezvous on the scene of action to carry out the plan of rescue.  But if our adventure should prove disastrous, Yeates and Uncanoola were to bide their time, striking in when and how they might.

Touching this contingency, I drew the old man aside for a word in private.

“If aught befall us, Ephraim,—­if we should be nabbed as we are like to be,—­you are not to let any hope of helping us lessen by a feather’s weight the rescue chance of the women.  You’ll promise me this?”

“Sartain sure; ye can rest easy on that, Cap’n John.  But don’t ye go for to let that rampaging boy of our’n upsot the fat in the fire with any o’ his foolishness.  He’s love-sick, he is; and there ain’t nothing in this world so ridic’lous foolish ez a love-sick boy—­less’n ’tis a love-sick gal.”

I promised on my part and so we went our separate ways in the gathering darkness; though not until the lashings of the packs had been cut and the powder and lead, save such spoil of both as Ephraim Yeates and Uncanoola would reserve, had been spilled into the river.  As for the bodies of the dead Indians, the old hunter said he would let them ride till he should come to some convenient chasm for a sepulcher; but I mistrusted that he and the Catawba would scalp and leave them once we were safely out of sight.

At the parting we took the river’s edge for it, Richard and I, keeping well under the bank and working our way cautiously down the gorge until we were stopped by the pouring cross-torrent of the underground tributary.  Here we turned short to the left along the margin of the barrier stream, and tracing its course across the gorge came presently to the northern cliff at the lip of the spewing cavern mouth.

By now the night was fully come and in the wooded defile we could place ourselves only by the sense of touch.

“Are you ready, Dick?” said I.

“As ready as a man with a shaking ague can be,” he gritted out.  “This dog’s work we have been doing of late has brought my old curse upon me and I am like to rattle my teeth loose.”

“Let me go alone then.  Another cold plunge may be the death of you.”

“No,” said he, stubbornly.  “Wait but a minute and the fever will be on me; then I shall be fighting-fit for anything that comes.”

So we waited, and I could hear his teeth clicking like castanets.  Having had a tertian fever more than once in the Turkish campaigning, I had a fellow-feeling for the poor lad, knowing well how the thought of a plunge into cold water would make him shrink.