r a
fortnight."

"She will not fail you," I ventured to say, adding: "But Jennifer is in
poor fettle for making speed."

"It's ride or be skulped for him, and I allow he'll ride," quoth the old
hunter, hastening his preparations for the start. "Reckon we can get him
on a hoss right now."

I went to see. Margery rose at my approach, and even in the poor light I
could see her draw herself up as if she would hold me at my proper
distance.

"Your patient, Mistress Margery,--We must mount and ride at once. Is he
fit?"

"No."

"But we must be far to the eastward before daybreak."

"I can not help it. If you make him ride to-night you will finish what
those cruel savages began, Captain Ireton."

"We have little choice--none, I should say."

"Oh, you are bitter hard!" she cried, though wherein my offending lay
just then I was wholly at a loss to know.

"'Tis your privilege to say so," I rejoined. "But as for making Dick
ride, that will be but the kindest cruelty. We are only a little way
from the nearest Indian towns, and if the daylight find us here--"

"Spare me," she broke in; and with that she turned shortly and asked
Ephraim Yeates to put her in her saddle.

Richard was still in the fever stupor, but he roused himself at my
urging and let us set him upon his beast. Once safe in the saddle, we
lashed him fast like a prisoner, with a forked tree-branch at his back
to hold him erect. This last was the old hunter's invention and 'twas
most ingenious. The forked limb, in shape like a Y, was set astride the
cantle, with the lower ends thonged stoutly to Dick's legs and to the
girths. Thus the upright stem of the inverted Y became an easy back-rest
for the sick man; and when he was securely lashed thereto there was
little danger for him save in some stumbling of the beast he rode.

When all was ready we had first to find our way down from the mountain
top; and now even the old borderer and the Indian confessed their
inability to do aught but retrace their steps by the only route they
knew: namely, by that ravine which we had twice traversed in daylight,
and up which they had led the captured horses in the dusk.

This route promised all the perils of a gantlet-running, since by it we
must take the risk of meeting the fleeing fugitives from the convoy
camp, if the explosion had spared any fit to lift and carry the
vengeance-cry. But here again there was no alternative, and we set us in
order for the descent, with