hunters had had
a clear view of the Indians as they landed on the opposite side, and
having made sure that there were no white prisoners among them, they had
given over the chase, convinced that the unfortunate Bushie must have
been borne away in some other direction by the three Indians whose
traces had been discovered at the corn-field fence, and lost sight of in
the larger trail. One chance more, however, remained to them: Big Black
Burl was still abroad, and so long as that faithful and courageous
fellow kept the war-path, good reason had they for hoping that all yet
might end well.

The sun was nigh his setting; a few more far-reaching winks of his great
bright eye and he would be sinking behind the evening hills of green
Kentucky, and rising above the morning hills of China. Already had the
horses and cattle--as was the custom of the times when Indians were
known to be across the border--been brought for the night within the
shelter of the fort. Already the ponderous wooden gate was swinging
creakingly to on its ponderous wooden hinges; but just as its ponderous
wooden bolt was sliding into the ponderous wooden staple, out from the
neighboring forest ringing, with echo on echo, it came--the old familiar
cry, the trumpet-call to battle abroad, the note of brotherly cheer at
home: "I yi, you dogs!"--too jocund and triumphant for any one whose
ears had caught the glad sound to doubt that glad tidings were coming.
Straightway reopening the gate and looking forth, the hunters spied,
moving toward them through the bushes in the edge of the woods, first
the plumed crest of an Indian warrior, then a more spreading display of
bright feathers, so high aloft that one could fancy they topped the head
of a giant full eight feet high, who came treading close behind. For a
few moments this was all that could be seen; till now, full over the
ragged skirts of the forest, there in open view, they came--the young
Indian in front, with his load of rifles laid across his arm; then Big
Black Burl, bristling all over with hatchets and knives; and lastly,
with a consequential twist of the tail and with the plumed scalp-lock of
an Indian waving over his neck, the invincible Grumbo bringing up the
rear.

And there, triumphantly borne aloft on the shoulders of our big black
hero, his sturdy young legs astride his deliverer's neck and dangling
down in front, bare and brier-scratched, his arms clasped tightly around
the bear-skin war-cap,