Jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest fashion, and after all could only say:  “You are sure you have the straight of it, Eph?”

The borderer appealed to Uncanoola.  “Come, Chief; give us the wo’th of your jedgment.  Has the old Gray Wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read them sign like they’d ort to be read?”

“Wah! the Gray Wolf has sharp eye—­sharp nose—­sharp tongue, sometime.  Sign no can lie when he read ’um.”

Jennifer turned to me.  “What say you, Jack?  ’Tis all far enough beyond me, I’ll confess.”

I was as much at sea touching the mystery as he was; yet the thing to do seemed plain enough.

“Never mind the baronet’s mystery; ’tis Mistress Margery’s hazard that concerns us,” I would say.  And then to Ephraim Yeates:  “Will this rain kill the trail, think you?”

He shook his head dubiously.  “I dunno for sartain; ‘twill make a heap o’ differ’ if they was anyways anxious to hide it.  Ez it starts out, with the women a-hossback, ’tis plain enough for a blind man to lift on the run.”

“Then let us be at it,” said I.  “We can very well afford to let the mystery untangle itself as we go.”  And with this the pursuit began in relentless earnest.

The trail of the two horses ridden by Margery and her woman cut a right angle with the road, turning northwest along the left bank of the stream; and, despite the rain, which was now pouring steadily even in the thick wood, the hoof-prints were so plainly marked that we could follow at a smart dog-trot.

In this speeding the old hunter and the Indian easily outwearied Jennifer and me.  They both ran with a slow swinging leap, like the racking gait, half pace, half gallop, of a well-trained troop horse.  Mile after mile they put behind them in these swinging bounds; and when, well on in the afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, I was fain to follow Jennifer’s lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness.

This breathing halt was of the briefest; but before the race began again, Ephraim Yeates took time to make a careful scrutiny of the trail, measuring the stride of the horses, and looking sharply on the briars for some bit of cloth or other token of assurance.  When we came up with him he was mumbling to himself.

“Um-hm; jes’ so.  They was a-making tracks along hereaway, sartain, sure; larruping them hosses to a keen jump, lickity-split.  Now, says I to myself, what’s the tarnation hurry?  Ain’t they got all the time there is to get where they’re a-going, immejitly, if not sooner?” Then he turned upon me.  “Cap’n John, can’t you and the youngster lay your heads side and side and make out what-all this here hoss-captain mought be up to?  It do look like he had some sort o’ hatchet to grind, a-sending that Afrikin back to raise a hue and cry, and then a-letting his Injuns leave a trail like this here that any tow-head boy from the settlemints could follow at a canter.”