ave lived to cross the pouring
torrent of the main river, or to wade up or down its bed; and if the
cavalcade had turned up the barrier stream its progress must have ended
abruptly against the sheer wall of the cliff at the entrance to the
low-arched cavern whence the tributary came into being. But if Falconnet
and his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrier
stream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossed
it. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presently
came out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoof
print, new or old.

"Well, now; I'll be daddled if this here ain't about the beatin'est
thing I ever chugged up ag'inst," was the old borderer's comment, when
we had flogged our wits to small purpose in the search for some clue to
the mystery. "What's your mind about it, hey, Chief?"

Uncanoola shook his head. "Heap plenty slick. No go up-stream, no go
down, no cross over, no go back. Mebbe go up like smoke--w'at?"

The hunter shook his head and would by no means admit the alternative.
"Ez I allow, that would ax for a merricle; and I reckon ez how when the
good Lord sends a chariot o' fire after sech a clanjamfrey as this'n o'
the hoss-captain's, it'll be mighty dad-blame' apt to go down 'stead of
up."

We were standing on the brink of the barrier stream no more than a
fisherman's cast from the black rock-mouth that spewed it up from its
underground maw. While the hunter was speaking, the Catawba had lapsed
into statue-like listlessness, his gaze fixed upon the eddying flood
which held the secret of the vanished cavalcade. Suddenly he came alive
with a bound and made a quick dash into the water. What he retrieved was
only a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeates
caught at it eagerly.

"Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!" he exclaimed. "It do take
an Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out!
Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o'
sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?"

I shook my head, seeing no special significance in the token; and Dick
asked: "What will it be, Ephraim, now that it is caught?"

The old man looked his pity for our dullard wit, and then set a moiety
of it in words.

"Well, well, now; I'm fair ashamed of ye! What all d'ye reckon blackened
the end o' this bit o' pine-branch?"

"Why, fire," says Richard, beginning, as I di