Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in ’60 when the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when my father had found this young savage lying in the forest, plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life and earned an Indian friendship.

“I know this Uncanoola,” I said.  “My father befriended him in the plague of ’60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe.”  Then I would ask if these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for the day’s march.

“’Tis liberty or death with us now; we’ve burnt our bridges behind us,” he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from Father Matthieu.  “And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man against his neighbor, ’tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from the North.”

“Measured by this morning’s work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves,” I ventured.

He shook his head doubtfully.  He was but a boy in years, but war is a shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting frontier, had matriculated early.

“You’ve seen us at our best,” he amended.  “We can ambush like the Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge—­and run away.”

“What’s that ye’re saying, youngster?” The grizzled hunter had finished reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.

“You heard me, Eph Yeates,” replied my young captain, curtly.

The old man leaned his rifle against a tree, spat on his hands, cut a clumsy caper in air, and gave tongue in a yell that should have been heard by Tarleton’s men at Appleby.

“By the eternal ’coonskins!  I can gouge the eye out of ary man that says Eph Yeates carn’t stand up fair and square and whop his weight in wildcats; and I can do it now, if not sooner!” he shrilled.  “Come on, you pap-eating, apron-stringed, French-daddied—­”

Where the blast of vituperative insult would have spent itself in natural course we were not to know, for in the midst another of the borderers, a wiry little man in greasy deerskin, came up behind the capering ancient, whipped an arm around his neck, and in a trice the two went down, kicking, scratching, buffeting and mauling, as like to a pair of battling bobcats as was ever seen.

For a moment I thought my youngster would let them have it out to the finish, but he did not.  At his order some of the others pulled the twain apart, reluctantly, I fancied; and when the thing was done the old man caught up his rifle and strode away in blackest wrath without a look behind him.

Captain Forney shrugged and spread his hands as his French father might have done.