the westward. So, by
dint of the maddest hurryings we got the bodies of the three Cherokees
hoist upon the horses, and were able to efface in part the signs of the
late encounter before the band of riders coming down the Indian path was
upon us. But there was no time to make an orderly retreat. At most we
could only withdraw a little way into the wood, halting when we were
well in cover, and hastily stripping coats and waistcoats to muffle the
heads of the horses.

So you are to conceive us waiting with nerves upstrung, ready for fight
or flight as the event should decide, stifling in such pent-up suspense
as any or all of us would gladly have exchanged for the fiercest battle.
Happily, the breath-scanting interval was short. From behind our thicket
screen we presently saw a file of Indian horsemen riding at a leisurely
footpace down the path. Ephraim Yeates quickly named these new-comers
for us.

"'Tis about ez I allowed--some o' the Tuckaseges a-scouting down to
hold a powwow with the hoss-captain. Now, then; if them sharp-nosed
ponies o' their'n don't happen to sniff the blood--"

The hope was dashed on the instant by the sudden snorting and shying of
two or three of the horses in passing, and we laid hold of our weapons,
keying ourselves to the fighting pitch. But, curiously enough, the
riders made no move to pry into the cause. So far from it, they flogged
the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly; and thus in a little
time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty
forest was ours to keep or break as we chose.

The old frontiersman was the first to speak.

"Well, friends, I reckon ez how we mought ez well thank the good Lord
for all His marcies afore we go any furder," he would say; and he doffed
his cap and did it forthwith.

It was as grim a picture as any limner of the weird could wish to look
upon. The twilight shadows were empurpling the mountains and gathering
in dusky pools here and there where the trees stood thickest in the
valley. The hush of nature's mystic hour was abroad, and even the
swiftly flowing river, rushing sullenly along its rocky bed no more than
a stone's cast beyond the Indian path, seemed to pretermit its low
thunderings. There was never a breath of air astir in all the wood, and
the leaves of the silver poplar that will twinkle and ripple in the
lightest zephyr hung stark and motionless.

Barring the old borderer, who had gone upon his knees, we stood