“Umph!” said he.  “Now if here ain’t that there dad-blame’ Turkey-fighter again!  What almighty cur’is things the good Lord do let loose on a stiff-necked and rebellious gineration!” Then to me, most pointedly:  “Say, Cap’n; the big woods ain’t no fitting place for such as you, ez I allow.  Ye mought be getting them purty boots o’ your’n all tore up on the briars.”

He ended with a dry little laugh not unlike Mr. Gilbert Stair’s parchment crackle; and, being his guest for the nonce, I laughed with him.

“Have your joke and welcome, Mr. Yeates,” said I.  “I am too near famished to quarrel with my chance of breakfast.”

Much to my astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spat upon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his.

“Whoop!” he yelled.  “No band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot out to call me ‘Mister’ and got away alive to brag on’t!  Ketch hold, you infergotten, Turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till I dip ye in the creek and soak a flour-ration ’r two out ’n that there pig-tail top-knot o’ your’n! Yip-pee!”

By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the stoical Catawba was all a-grin.  So, seeing I was like to lose countenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with my capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler’s hug.

For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my senior, he was a pretty handful.  ’Twas much like trying to catch a fall out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism.  None the less, after some wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his promise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman’s trick—­a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift—­which sent him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the landslide.

The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.  When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeates sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.

“Put it there, stranger,” he said.  “I reckon ez how that settles it.  Old Eph Yeates’ll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn and pan-meat with the man that can flop him that-away.  Whilst ye’re a-needing a friend in the big woods—­a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest or’narily whop his weight in wildcats—­why, old Eph’s your man; from now on, if not sooner.”  And in this wise began an alliance the like of which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer’s part, these colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.

As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily, pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick he would never let another play on him.  And then we four fell upon the deer’s meat which was by this time—­not cooked, to be sure, but seared a little on the outside in true hunter fashion.