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 stiffening¹ rigor² 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 grilling³ 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 fangs⁴ 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, Jack⁵; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright⁶. 'Tis too horrible! I'm going back, I say."
 
The Catawba grunted⁷ 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 camp.
 
Richard spun⁸ around and gripped the Indian by the shoulders. "Then she is alive and safe?" he burst out. "Speak, friend, whilst I leave the breath in you to do it!"
 
"Ugh!" said the chief, in nowise moved either by Jennifer's vehemence⁹ or by the dog-like shake. "What for Captain Jennif' think papoose thinks 'bout¹⁰ the Gray Wolf and poor Injun? Catch um white squaw firs'; then blow um up Chelakee camp and catch um Captain Jennif' and Captain Long-knife if can. Heap do firs' thing firs', and las' thing las'. Wah!"
 
It was the longest speech this devoted¹¹ ally of ours was ever known to make; and having made it he went dumb again save for his urgings of us forward. But presently both he and I had our hands full with the poor lad. The swift transition from despair to joy proved too much for Dick; and, besides, the fever was in his blood and he was grievously burned.
 
So we went stumbling on through the cloud-darkened wood, locked arm in arm like three drunken men, tripping over root snares¹² and bramble nets spread for our feet, and getting well sprinkled by the dripping foliage¹³. And at the last, when we reached the ravine at the valley's head, Dick was muttering in the fever delirium¹⁴ and we were well-nigh carrying him a dead weight between us.
 
'Twas a most heart-breaking business, getting the poor lad up that rock-ladder of escape in the darkness; for though I had come out of the fire with fewer burns than the roasting of me warranted, the battle preceding it had opened the old sword wound in my shoulder. So, taking it all in all, I was but a short-breathed second to the faithful Catawba.
 
None the less, we tugged¹⁵ it through after some laborious¹⁶ fashion, and were glad enough when the steep ascent¹⁷ gave place to leveler going, and we could sniff¹⁸ the fragrance¹⁹ of the plateau pines and feel their wire-like needles under foot.
 
By this the shower cloud had passed and the stars were coming out, but it was still pitch black under the pines; so dark that I started like a nervous woman and went near to panic when a horse snorted at my very ear, and a voice, bodiless, as it seemed, said; "Well, now; the Lord be praised! if here ain't the whole enduring—"
 
What Ephraim Yeates would have said, or did say, was lost upon me. For now my poor Dick's strength was quite spent, and when the chief and I were easing him to lie full length upon the ground, there was a quick little cry out of the darkness, a swish of petticoats, and my lady darted²⁰ in to fall upon Richard in a very transport of pity.
 
"Oh, my poor Dick! they have killed you!" she sobbed²¹; "oh, cruel, cruel!" Then she lashed²² out at us. "Why don't you strike a light? How can I find and dress his hurts in the dark?"
 
"Your pardon, Mistress Margery," I said; "'tis only that the fever has overcome him. He has no sore hurts, as I believe, save the fire-scorching."
 
"A light!" she commanded; "I must have a light and see for myself."
 
We had to humor her, though it was something against prudence²³. Ephraim found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel of a great king's musket—one of his reavings from the enemy—soon had a pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while she was cooing over her patient and binding²⁴ up his burns in some simples gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double rescue from the old hunter.
 
Set forth²⁵ in brief, that which had come as a miracle to Dick and me figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the Indian camp at our torture spectacle.
 
Yeates and the Catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof²⁶. But later, when every Indian of the Cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they set to work.
 
With no watch to give the alarm, 'twas easy to rifle the Indian wigwams of the firearms and ammunition²⁷. The latter they threw into the stream; the muskets²⁸ they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern edge of the savanna²⁹, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.
 
The next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. Like the looting of the Indian camp, 'twas quickly planned and daringly done; it asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of the tepee-lodge³⁰, a warning word to Margery and her woman, and a shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late jailers to the shelter of the wood.
 
Once free of the camp, Yeates had hurried his charges to a place of temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the Catawba to cross the stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. When he had led the women to a place of safety, the old man left them and ran back to his masked battery of loaded muskets. Here, at an owl-cry signal from Uncanoola, he opened fire upon the redcoats.
 
The outworking of the coup³¹ de main was a triumph for the old borderer's shrewd generalship. At the death-dealing volley the Englishmen were thrown into confusion; whilst the Indians, summoned by the firing and the shrilling³² of the captain's whistle, dashed blindly into the trap. At the right moment Uncanoola touched off his powder train and cut in with a clear field for his rescue of Dick and me.
 
Of the complete success of these various climaxings, Ephraim Yeates had his first assurance when we three came safely to the rendezvous³³; for, after firing his masked battery, the old hunter lost no time in rejoining the women and in hastening with them out of the valley. Had these three been afoot we might have overtaken them; but Yeates had been lucky enough to stumble upon the black mare³⁴ peacefully cropping the grass in a little glade³⁵; and with this mount for Margery and her tire-woman he had easily outpaced us.
 
All this I had from Yeates what time Margery was pouring the wine and oil of womanly sympathy into Richard's woundings; and I may confess that whilst the ear was listening to the hunter's tale, the eye was taking note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them down to the score of a great love which would not be denied. 'Twas altogether as I would have had it; and yet the thought came unbidden that she might spare a niggard moment and the breath to ask me how I did. And because she would not, I do think my burns smarted the crueler.
 
It was to have surcease of these extra smartings that I turned my back upon the trio under the flaring³⁶ torch and took up with Ephraim Yeates the pressing question of the moment.
 
"As I take it, we may not linger here," I said. "Have you marked out a line of retreat?"
 
The old borderer was busied with his loot of the Indian camp—'twas not in his nature to come off empty-handed, however hard pressed he had been for time. In the raffle³⁷ of it, guns and pistols, dressed skins and warrior³⁸ finery, he came upon my good old blade and Richard's great claymore—trophies claimed by the head men of the Cherokees after our taking, as we made no doubt.
 
"Found 'em hanging in the lodge that............