“That’s jest about what I was most afeard of,” said the borderer, with a hasty glance skyward.  “Down on your hunkers, Chief, and help me read this sign afore the good Lord takes to sending His rain on the jest and the unjest,” and therewith these two fell to quartering all the ground like trained dogs nosing for a scent.

We stood aside and watched them, Richard and I, realizing that we were of small account and should be until, perchance, it should come to the laying on of hearty blows.  After the closest scrutiny, which took account of every broken twig and trampled blade of grass, this prolonged until the rain was falling smartly to wash out all the foot-prints in the dusty road, Yeates and the Indian gave over and came to join us under the sheltering branches of an oak.

“’Tis a mighty cur’is sign; most mighty cur’is,” quoth the hunter, slinging the rain-drops from his fur cap and emptying the pan of his rifle, not upon the ground, as a soldier would, but saving every precious grain.  “Ez I allow, I never heerd tell of any Injuns a-doing that-away afore; have you, Chief? hey?”

The Catawba’s negative was his guttural “Wah,” and Ephraim Yeates, having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length.

“Mighty cur’is, ez I was a-saying.  Them Injuns fixed up an ambush_ment_, blazed in a volley at the clostest sort o’ range, and followed it up with a tomahawk and knife rush,—­lessen that there Afrikin was too plumb daddled to tell any truth, whatsomedever.  And, spite of all this here rampaging, they never drawed a single drop o’ blood in the whole enduring scrimmage!  Mighty cur’is, that; ain’t it, now?  And that ain’t all:  some o’ them same Injuns, or leastwise one of ’em, was a-wearing boots with spurs onto ’em.  What say, Chief?”

Uncanoola held up all the fingers of one hand and two of the other.  “Sebben Injun; one pale-face,” he said, in confirmation.

I looked at Richard, and he gave me back the eyeshot, with a hearty curse to speed it.

“Falconnet!” said he, by way of tail-piece to the oath; and I nodded.

“’Twas that there same hoss-captain, sure enough, ez I reckon,” drawled Yeates.  “Maybe one o’ you two can tell what-all he mought be a-driving at.”

Jennifer shook his head, and I, too, was silent.  ’Twas out of all reason to suppose that the baronet would resort to sheer violence and make a terrified captive of the woman he wanted to marry.  It was a curious mystery, and the hunter’s next word involved it still more.

“And yit that ain’t all.  Whilst some o’ the Injuns was a-whooping it up acrost the creek, a-chasing the folks that was making tracks for their city o’ refuge, t’others run the two gals off into the big woods at the side o’ the road.  Then Mister Hoss-Captain picks up the Afrikin, chucks him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after which he climbs his hoss and makes tracks hisself—­not to ketch up with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way,” pointing across the creek and down the road to the southward.