ated.
Although the salt-makers waited in much impatience through several hours
for the dispersal of the combatants, and were constrained to fire their
pistols almost in the faces of the wolves and panthers, Captain Stuart's
chief emotions seemed expressed in admiring the prowess of a champion in
the fight, whom he identified as the "big _yanasa_[I] that was the pivot
man of the wheeling flank," and, on his return, in guying the
quartermaster on the loss of the great cauldrons, for their trampled
remains were unrecognizable; but indeed, this worthy's countenance was
lugubrious enough to grace the appellation of chief mourner, when he was
apprised of the sad ending of the salt-making episode, for he loved a
big kettle, as only a quartermaster or a cook can, in a country in which
utensils are small and few and not to be replaced.

That Stuart felt more than he seemed to feel was suspected by Demere,
who was cognizant of how the tension gave way with a snap one day in the
autumn of that year of wearing suspense. Demere looked up with a
changed face from the dispatches just received--the first express that
had come across the mountains for a month, having dodged and eluded
bands of wandering Indian marauders all the way.

"Governor Lyttleton has taken the field," he said.

"_At last!_" cried Stuart, as in the extremity of impatience.

For upon the massacre of all the inmates of a strong station, carried by
storm, in addition to other isolated murders up and down the frontier,
the royal governor of South Carolina had initiated a series of
aggressive measures; asked aid of North Carolina, urged Virginia to send
reenforcements and provisions to Fort Loudon (it being a place which
from its remote situation was very difficult at all times to victual,
but in the event of a Cherokee war entirely cut off from means of
supply), and by great exertions succeeded in mustering a force of eight
hundred militia and three hundred regulars to advance into the Indian
country from the south. The vigor and proportions of this demonstration
alarmed the Cherokees, grown accustomed to mere remonstrance and
bootless threats. They had realized, with their predominant military
craft, the most strongly developed of their mental traits, that the
occupation of all the available forces of the government in Canada and
on the northwestern frontiers crippled the capacity to make these
threats good. Thus they had reveled in a luxury of fancied impunity an