prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last
so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires
were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer--could
hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent
us double.

The tenth day, as I well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the
fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air
in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an
oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher
with every added mile of westering.

The sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a
rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly
from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert. In the steepest part
of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly
sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, Ephraim
Yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped
behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the Catawba, running
at Yeates's heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped
and swallowed him.

A moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless
noontide stillness, and Jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good
time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us. Then, like a distorted
echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer's
rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all
a-clamor with mocking repetitions.

"Missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!" growled the
marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload. "That there's what comes
o' being so dad-blame' hongry that ye can't squinch fair atween the
gun-sights. I reckon ez how ye'd better hunker down and lie clost, you
two. 'Twouldn't s'prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o' them
sharp-p'inted sticks in his--The Lord be praised for all His marcies!
the chief's got him!"

But Uncanoola had not. He came in presently, his black eyes snapping
with disappointment, saying in answer to Yeates's question that the yell
had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old
borderer's bullet.

"Chelakee snake heap slick: heap quick dodge," was all we could get out
of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and
fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.

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