e past human help--took two staggering
steps and flung his arms about my neck.

Uncanoola gave us no time to come by easy stages to full-wit sanity. In
a twinkling he had pounced upon us to crush us one upon the other behind
the larger tree. And now I come upon another of those flitting instants
so crowded with happenings that the swiftest pen must seem to make them
lag. 'Twas all in a heart-beat, as it were: the Catawba's freeing of
us; his flinging us to earth behind the tree; a spurt of blinding yellow
flame from the foot of the powder-cliff, and a booming, jarring shock
like that of an earthquake.

The momentary glare of the yellow flash lit up a scene most
awe-inspiring. The spouting fountain of fire at the base of the great
powder-rock was thick with flying missiles; and on high the very cliff
itself was tottering and crumbling. So much I saw; then the Catawba
sprang up to haul us afoot by main strength, and to rush us, with an arm
for each, headlong through the wood toward the valley head.

But Dick hung back, and when the dull thunder of the falling rocks, the
crash of the tumbling cliff and the shrill death yells of the doomed
ones came to our ears, he fought loose from the Indian and flung himself
down, crying as if his heart would break.

"O God! she's lost, she's lost!--and I have missed the chance to die
with her or for her!"

XXX

HOW EPHRAIM YEATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES

However much or little the Catawba understood of Richard Jennifer's
grief or its cause, the faithful Indian had a thing to do and he did it,
loosing his grasp of me to turn and fall upon Dick with pullings and
haulings and buffetings, fit to bring a man alive out of a very
stiffening rigor of despair.

So, in a hand-space he had him up, and we were pressing on again, in
midnight darkness once we had passed beyond the light of our grilling
fires. No word was spoken; under the impatient urging of the Indian
there was little breath to spare for speech. But when Richard's
afterthought had set its fangs in him, he called a halt and would not be
denied.

"Go on, you two, if you are set upon it," he said. "I must go back.
Bethink you, Jack; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright.
'Tis too horrible! I'm going back, I say."

The Catawba grunted his disgust.

"Captain Jennif' talk fas'; no run fas'. What think? White squaw
_yonder_--no yonder," pointing first forward and then back in the
direction of the stricken