“Found ’em hanging in the lodge that usen to belong to the Great Bear,” said the hunter, and then with grim humor:  “’Lowed to keep ’em to ricollect ye by if so be ye was foreordained and predestinated to go up in a fiery chariot, like the good old Elijah.”  The weapons disposed of, he made answer to my query.  “Ez for making tracks immejitly, if not sooner, I allow there ain’t no two notions about that.  But I’m dad-daddled if I know which-a-way to put out, Cap’n John, and that’s the gospil fact.”

“Why not strike for the Great Trace, and so go back the way the powder convoy came?” I asked.

It could be done, he said, but the hazard was great.  ’Twas out of all reason to hope that there were no survivors left in the sunken valley to carry the news of the earthquake massacre.  That news once cried abroad in the near-by Cowee Towns, the entire Tuckasege nation would turn out to run us down.  Moreover, the avengers would look to find us in the only practicable horse-path leading eastward.

“Ez I’m telling you right now, Cap’n John, we made one more blunder in this here onfall of our’n, owin’ to our having ne’er a seventh son of a seventh son amongst us to look a little ways ahead.  Where we flashed in the pan was in not making our rendyvoo down yonder where you and Cap’n Dick got in.  Ever’ last one of ’em able to crawl is a-making straight for that crivvis dodge-hole right now, and if we was there we could do ‘em like the Gileadites did the men o’ Ephraim at the passages o’ the Jordan.”

Fresh as I was from the torture fire, I could not forbear a shudder at this old man’s savagery.

“Kill them in cold blood?” I would say.

“Anan?” he queried, as not understanding my point of view; and I let the matter rest.  He was of those who slay and spare not where an enemy is concerned.

But when we came to consider of it there seemed to be no alternative to the eastward flitting by way of the Great Trace.  To the west and south there was only the trackless wilderness; and to the north no white settlement nearer than that of the over-mountain folk on the Watauga.  I asked if we might hope to reach this.

“’Tis a long fifty mile ez the crow flies, over e’enabout the mountainousest patch o’ land that ever laid out o’ doors,” was the hunter’s reply.  “And there ain’t ne’er a deer-track, ez I knows on, to p’int the way.”

“Then we must ride eastward and run the risk of pursuit by the Tuckaseges,” said I.

“Ez I reckon, that’s about the long and short of it.  And I do everlastedly despise to make that poor little gal jump her hoss and ride skimper-scamper again, when she’s been fair living a-horseback for a fortnight.”

“She will not fail you,” I ventured to say, adding:  “But Jennifer is in poor fettle for making speed.”

“It’s ride or be skulped for him, and I allow he’ll ride,” quoth the old hunter, hastening his preparations for the start.  “Reckon we can get him on a hoss right now.”