They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran.  There was no hint of soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw of deference to their captain.  Indeed, at first I could not pick the captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.

Yet these were a handful of the men who had fought so stoutly against the Tory odds at Ramsour’s Mill, their captain being that Abram Forney of whom you may read in the histories; and though they made no military show, they lacked neither hardihood nor courage, of a certain persevering sort.

“Ever come any closter to your Amen than that, stranger?” drawled one of them, a grizzled borderer, lank, lean and weather-tanned, with a face that might have been a leathern mask for any hint it gave of what went on behind it.  “I’ll swear that little whip’-snap’ officer cub had the word ‘Fire’ sticking in his teeth when I gave him old Sukey’s mouthful o’ lead to chaw on.”

I said I had come as near my exit a time or two before, though always in fair fight; and thereupon was whelmed in an avalanche of questions such as only simple-hearted folk know how to ask.

When I had sufficiently accounted for myself, Captain Forney—­he was the limber-backed young fellow I had ridden behind—­gripped my hand and gave me a hearty welcome and congratulation.

“My father and yours were handfast friends, Captain Ireton.  More than that, I’ve heard my father say he owed yours somewhat on the score of good turns.  I’m master glad I’ve had a chance to even up a little; though as for that, we should both thank the Indian.”  At which he looked around as one who calls an eye-muster and marks a missing man.  “Where is the chief, Ephraim?”—­this to the grizzled hunter who was methodically reloading his long rifle.

“He’s back yonder, gathering in the hair-crop, I reckon.  Never you mind about him, Cap’n.  He’ll turn up when he smells the meat a-cooking, immejitly, if not sooner.”

Here, as I imagine, I looked all the questions that lacked answers; for Captain Forney took it in hand to fit them out with explications.

“’Tis Uncanoola, the Catawba,” he said; “one of the friendlies.  He was out a-scouting last night and came in an hour before daybreak with the news that Colonel Tarleton was set upon hanging a spy of ours.  From that to our little ambushment—­”

“I see,” said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves.  “This Catawba:  is he a man about my age?” Captain Forney laughed.  “God He only knows an Indian’s age.  But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or more.  I can recall his coming to my father’s house when I was but a little cadger.”

At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage, as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his firelock and stood before me defenseless.