Luckily for us the new danger was approaching from the westward¹. So, by dint² of the maddest hurryings we got the bodies of the three Cherokees hoist³ upon the horses, and were able to efface⁴ 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 muffle⁵ 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, stifling⁶ in such pent-up suspense⁷ as any or all of us would gladly have exchanged for the fiercest battle. Happily, the breath-scanting interval⁸ was short. From behind our thicket⁹ screen we presently saw a file of Indian horsemen riding at a leisurely¹⁰ 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 ponies¹¹ o' their'n don't happen to sniff¹² 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, curiously¹³ enough, the riders made no move to pry¹⁴ into the cause. So far from it, they flogged the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly¹⁵; and thus in a little time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty¹⁶ 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 doffed¹⁷ his cap and did it forthwith.
 
It was as grim a picture as any limner of the weird¹⁹ could wish to look upon. The twilight²⁰ shadows were empurpling the mountains and gathering²¹ in dusky pools here and there where the trees stood thickest in the valley. The hush²² of nature's mystic hour was abroad, and even the swiftly flowing river, rushing sullenly²³ 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 ripple²⁴ in the lightest zephyr²⁵ hung stark²⁶ and motionless.
 
Barring the old borderer, who had gone upon his knees, we stood as we were; the Catawba holding the pack horses, and Jennifer and I the three that bore the ghastly burdens of mortality. The bodies of the slain²⁷ had been flung across the saddles to balance as they might; and to the pommel of that saddle which bore the trunk of the five-feathered chieftain, Uncanoola had knotted the grisly head by its scalp-lock to dangle²⁸ and roll about with every restless movement of the horse—a hideous²⁹ death-mask that seemed to mop and mow³⁰ and stare fearsomely at us with its wide-open glassy eyes.
 
With this background fit for the staging of a scene in Dante Alighieri's tragic³¹ comedy, the looming³² mountains, the upper air graying on to dusk, and the solemn forest aisles³³ full of lurking³⁴ shadows, you are to picture the old frontiersman, bareheaded and on his knees, pouring forth¹⁸ his soul in all the sonorous³⁵ phrase of Holy Writ³⁶, now in thanksgiving, and now in most terrible beseechings that all the vials of Heaven's wrath³⁷ might be poured out upon our enemies.
 
His face, commonly a leather mask to hide the man behind it, was now ablaze³⁸ with the fire of zealotry; and, truly, in these his spasm-fits of supplication³⁹ he stood for all that is most awe-inspiring and unnerving, asking but a little stretch of the imagination to figure him as one of those old iron-hard prophets of denunciation come back to earth to be the herald⁴⁰ of the wrath of God.
 
'Twas close upon actual nightfall when the old man rose from his knees and, with the rising, put off the beadsman and put on the shrewd old Indian fighter. Followed some hurried counselings as to how we should proceed, and in these the hunter set the pace for us as his age and vast experience in woodcraft gave him leave.
 
His plan had all the merit of simplicity⁴¹. Now that we had the horses, Richard's notion of an approach from the head of the sunken valley became at once the most hopeful of any. So Ephraim Yeates proposed that we betake ourselves to the mountain top and to the head of that ravine which the Catawba and I had discovered. Here we should leave the horses well hidden and secured, make our way down the ravine, and, with the stream for a guide, follow the sunken valley to the camp at its lower end. Once on the ground without having given the alarm, we might hope to free the captives under cover of the darkness; and our retreat up the valley would be far less hazardous⁴² than any open flight by way of the unexplored road the powder train had used.
 
So said the old backwoodsman; but neither Dick nor I would agree to this in toto. Dick argued that while we were killing⁴³ time in the roundabout advance we should be leaving Margery wholly at the mercy of the baronet, and that every hour of delay was full of hideous m............