'Twas Richard Jennifer who first broke the noontide silence of the mountain top, voicing the query¹ which was thrusting sharp at all of us.  
"Now how in the name of all the fiends did they make shift to burrow² from yonder bag-bottom into this?" he would say.
 
"Ez I allow, that's jest what the good Lord fotched us here for—to find out," was Yeates's rejoinder. "Do you and the chief, Cap'n John, circumambylate this here pitfall³ yon way, whilst Cap'n Dick and I go t'other way 'round. By time we've made the circuit and j'ined company again, I reckon we'll know for sartain whether 'r no they climm' the mounting to get in."
 
So when we had breathed us a little the circuiting was begun, Ephraim Yeates and Jennifer going toward the lower end of the sink, and the Catawba and I in the opposite direction.
 
Since we must examine closely every rift⁴ and crevice⁵ in the boundary cliff, it was a most tedious undertaking⁶; and I do remember how my great trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing⁷ agony. They say an army goes upon its belly⁸, but an old campaigner will tell you that you can march a soldier till he be too thin to cast a shadow if only he hath ease of his footgear.
 
Taking it all in all, it proved a slow business, this looping of the sunken valley; and when we had worked around to the eastern cliff and to a meeting point with the old hunter and Richard Jennifer, the sun was level in our faces and the day was waning⁹.
 
Coming together again, we made haste to compare notes. There was little enough to add to the common fund of information, and the mystery of the lost trail remained a mystery. True, we, the Indian and I, had found a ravine at the extreme upper end of the valley through which, we thought, a sure-footed horse might be led at a pinch, up or down; but this ravine had not been used by the powder train, and apart from it there was no practicable horse path leading down from the plateau.
 
As for the hunter and Richard, they had made a discovery which might stand for what it was worth. At its lower extremity¹⁰ the sunken valley was separated from the great gorge¹¹ without only by a ridge¹² which was no more than a huge dam; and this diking ridge was evidently tunneled by the stream, since the latter had no visible outlet¹³.
 
Inasmuch as the most favorable point of espial upon the camp below was the cliff whence we had first looked down into the sink, we harked back thither¹⁴, passing around the lower end of the valley and along the barrier ridge. Plan we had none as yet, for the preliminary to any attempt at a rescue must be some better knowledge of the way into and out of Falconnet's cunningly chosen stronghold. True, we might win in and out again by the ravine which the chief and I had explored at the upper end, and Dick was for trying this when the night should give us the curtain of darkness for a shield. But the old hunter would hold this forlorn hope in reserve as a last resort.
 
"Sort it out for yourself, Cap'n Dick," he argued. "Whatsomedever we make out to do—four on us ag'inst that there whole enduring army o' their'n—has got to be done on the keen jump, with a toler'ble plain hoss-road for the skimper-scamper race when it is done. For, looking it up and down and side to side, we've got to have hosses—some o' their hosses, at that. I jing! if we could jest make out somehow 'r other to lay our claws on the beasteses aforehand—"
 
We had reached the cliff and were once more peering down at the enemy's camp. Though for the cliff-shadowed valley it was long past sunset and all the depths were blue and purple in the changing half-lights of the hour, the shadow veil was but a gauze of color, softening¹⁶ the details without obscuring them. So we could mark well the metes¹⁷ and bounds of the camp and prick¹⁸ in all the items.
 
The camp field was the largest of the savannas¹⁹ or natural clearings. On the margin²⁰ of the stream the Indian lodges²¹ were pitched in a semicircle to face the water. Farther back, Falconnet's troop was hutted in rough-and-ready shelters made of pine boughs²²—these disposed to stand between the camp of the Cherokees and the tepee-lodge of the captive women which stood among the trees in that edge of the forest hemming²³ the slope which buttressed²⁴ our cliff of observation.
 
At first we sought in vain for the storing-place of the powder. It was the sharp eyes of the Catawba that finally descried²⁵ it. A rude housing of pine boughs, like the huts of the troopers, had been built at the base of a great boulder²⁶ on the opposite bank of the stream; and here was the lading of the powder train.
 
From what could be seen 'twas clear that the camp was no mere²⁷ bivouac for the day; indeed, the Englishmen were still working upon their pine-bough shelters, building themselves in as if for a stay indefinite.
 
"'Tis a rest camp," quoth Dick; "though why they should break the march here is more than I can guess."
 
"No," said Ephraim Yeates. "'Tain't jest rightly a rest camp, ez I take it. Ez I was a-saying last night, this here is Tuckasege country, and we ain't no furder than a day's running from the Cowee Towns. Now the Tuckaseges and the over-mounting Cherokees ain't always on the best o' tarms, and I was a wondering if the hoss-captain hadn't sot down here to wait whilst he could send a peace-offer' o' powder and lead on to the Cowee chiefs to sort o' smooth the way."
 
"No send him yet; going to send," was Uncanoola's amendment²⁸. "Look-see, Chelakee braves make haste for load horses down yonder now!"
 
Again the sharp eyes of the Catawba had come in play. At the foot of the great boulder some half dozen of the Cherokees were busy with the powder cargo²⁹, lashing³⁰ pack-loads of it upon two horses. One of the group, who appeared to be directing the labor³¹ of the others, stood apart, holding the bridle³² reins³⁴ of three other horses caparisoned as for a journey. When the loading was accomplished³⁵ to the satisfaction of the horse-holding chieftain, he and two others mounted, took the burdened animals in tow, and the small cavalcade³⁶ filed off down the stream toward the apparent cul de sac at the lower end of the valley.
 
Ephraim Yeates was up in a twinkling, dragging us back from the cliff edge.
 
"Up with ye!" he cried. "Now's our chance to kill two pa'tridges with one stone! If we can make out to get down into t'other valley in time to see how them varmints come out, we'll know the way in. More'n that, we can ambush³⁷ 'em and so make sartain sure o' five o' the six hosses we're a-going to need, come night. But we've got to leg for it like Ahimaaz the son of Zadok!"
 
Thus the old borderer; and being only too eager to come to handgrips with the enemy, we were up and running faster than ever Joab's messenger ran, long before the old man finished with his Scriptural simile³⁸.
 
Not to take the risk of delay on any unexplored short cut, we made straight for the ravine of our ascent³⁹, found it as by unerring instinct, and were presently racing^............