the four winds; Thomas Sumter's free-lances had been attacked, worsted
and driven, with the leader himself so sorely wounded that he was
carried from the field in a blanket slung between the horses of two of
his men; and, as was to be expected, the Tories were up and arming in
all the north country. Truly, the prospect was most gloomy and the
outlook for the patriot cause was to the full as desperate as King
George himself could wish.

"But you, Ephraim, and the chief, here; are you two running away like
all the others?" Richard would ask.

The old hunter growled his denial between the mouthfuls of scarce-warmed
meat. "I reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping on
the redcoats' trail, ez I allow. Ain't we, Chief, hey?"

The Catawba's assent was a guttural "Wah!" and Ephraim Yeates went on to
explain.

"Ye see, 'tis this-away. You took a laugh out'n me, Cap'n Dick, for
spying 'round on that there Britisher hoss-captain and his redskins; but
'long to'ards the last I met up with a thing 'r two wo'th knowing. 'Twas
a powder and lead cargo they was a-waiting for; and they're allowing to
sneak it through the mountings to the overhill Cherokees."

"Well?" says Dick.

The old man cut another slice of the venison and took his time to
impale it on the forked toasting stick.

"Well, then I says to the chief, here, says I, 'Chief, this here's our
A-number-one chance to spile the 'Gyptians; get heap gun, heap powder,
heap lead, heap scalp.' The chief, he says, 'Wah!'--which is good
Injun-talk for anything ye like,--and so here we are, hot-foot on the
trail o' that there hoss-captain and his powder varmints."

"Alone?" said I, in sheer amazement at the brazen effrontery of this
chase of half a hundred well-armed men by two.

The old hunter chuckled his dry little laugh. "We ain't sich tarnation
big fools ez we look, Cap'n John. There's a good plenty of 'em to wallop
us, ez I'll allow, if it come to fighting 'em fair and square. But
there'll be some dark night 'r other whenst we can slip up on 'em and
raise a scalp 'r two and lift what plunder we can tote; hey, Chief?"

But now Richard would inquire what time in the night the powder convoy
left Appleby Hundred, and if Gilbert Stair's York District guests had
traveled with it. To these askings Yeates made answer that Falconnet and
his troop, with the Cherokee contingent, had taken the road at midnight,
or thereabouts; and that the Witherbys, with Mistres