“No,” said I, firmly.  “These followers of mine must be stopped, as you say, else there is no need of my going on.  But there must be no butcher’s work.”

The patriarch frowned and wagged his beard again.

“A true patriot should hold himself ready to give his own life or take another’s,” quoth he.

“Truly; and I am most willing on both heads.  But we have had enough and more than enough of midnight massacre.”

Where this argument would have led us in the end, I know not, since we were both waxing warm upon it.  But in the midst the little maid came running from the open door, her blue eyes wide in childish terror.

“Injun man!” was all she could say; but that was enough.  At a bound I reached the door.  An Indian was at my horse’s head, loosing the halter, as I thought.  Before he could twist to face me the point of the Ferara was at his back.

Luckily, he had the wit not to move.  “No kill Uncanoola,” he muttered, this without the stirring of a muscle.  Then, as if he were talking to the horse:  “White squaw, she send ’um word; say ‘good by.’”

My point dropped as if another blade had parried the thrust.

“Mistress Margery, you mean?  Do you come from her?”

“She send ’um word; say ‘good by,’” he repeated.

“What else did she say?” I demanded.

“No say anyt’ing else:  say ‘good by.’” He turned upon me at that and I saw why he had kept his face averted.  He had on the war paint of a Cherokee chief.

“Uncanoola good Chelakee now,” he grinned.  “Help redcoat soldier find Captain Long-knife.  Wah!”

I saw his drift, and though I knew his courage well, the boldness of the thing staggered me.  He, too, had penetrated to the inner lines of the British encampment at Charlotte; and when they had sought an Indian tracker to lift my trail, ’twas he who had volunteered.  But now my spirits rose.  With this unexpected ally we might hope to deal forcefully and yet fairly with my rear-guard.

“Where are your masters now?” I asked.

He spat upon the ground.  “Catawba chief has no master,” he said, proudly.  “Redcoat pale-faces yonder,” pointing back the way I had come.  “Make fire, boil tea, sing song, heap smoke pipe.”

“We must take them,” said I.

He nodded.  “Kill ’um all; take scalp.  Wah!”

The bloodthirstiness of my two allies was appalling.  But I undertook to cool the Indian’s ardor, explaining that the redcoat soldiers were the Long-knife’s brothers, in a way, not to be slain save in honorable battle.  I am not sure whether I earned the Catawba’s contempt, or his pity for my weakness; but since he was loyal to the son of his old benefactor first, and a savage afterward, he yielded the point.

So now I made him known to my patriarchal host, who all this time had been standing guard at the cabin door with the old Queen’s-arm for a weapon.  So we three sat on the door-stone and planned it out.  When the night was far enough advanced, we would stalk the soldiers in their camp, sparing life as we could.