'twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were i to try to picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in the savage wilderness. for the actors in any play the trivial details have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.

so, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the plain-marked trail to guide us.

at times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the august heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the pine-trees. anon it traced the crooked windings of some brawling mountain stream through thicket tangles where, you would think, no woman-ridden horse could penetrate.

one day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded the autumn, whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and arabesques against the blue. but in the night, mayhap, a dismal rain would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench us where we lay, sodden already with the heaviness of exhaustion.

since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of fortitude and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in a little time the hush of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting us of speech and bidding us go softly. and after this the march became a soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless mechanisms wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop forever.

this was the loom on which we wove the backward-reaching web of strenuous onpressing. but through that web the scarlet thread of famine shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present specter of starvation.

you will not think it strange that i should have but dim and misty memories of this fainting time. of all privations famine soonest blunts the senses, making a man oblivious of all save that which drives him onward. the happenings that i remember clearest are those which turned upon some temporary bridging of the hunger gulf. one was yeates's killing of a milch doe which, with her fawn, ran across our path when we had fasted two whole days. by this, a capital crime in any hunter's code, you may guess how cruelly we were nipped in the hunger vise. also, i remember this: as if to mock us all the glades and openings on the hillsides were thicketed with berry bushes, long past bearing. and, being too late for these, we were as much too early for the nuts of the hickory and chestnut and black walnut that pelted us in passing.

the doe's meat, coming at a time of sharpest need, set us two days farther on the march; and when that was spent or spoiled we did as we could, being never comfortably filled, i think, and oftener haggard and enfeebled for the want of food. since we dared not stop to go aside for game, the catawba would set over-night snares for rabbits; and for another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. in this haphazard hunting nothing ever fell to jennifer's skilless clubbing, or to mine; but the old borderer and the indian were better marksmen, and now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the famine edge of hunger.

for all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on any lip of turning back. with margery's desperate need to key us to the unflinching pitch, richard and i would go on while there was strength to set one foot before the other. but for the old borderer and the indian there was no such bellows to blow the fire of perseverance. none the less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and held us to it; the catawba spartan-proud and uncomplaining; the old hunter no whit less tireless and enduring. at this far-distant day i can close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of ephraim yeates, striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder. good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had richard or i been less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his own would have shamed us into following where he led.

we had been ten days in this starving wilderness, driving onward at the pace that kills and making the most of every hour of daylight, before yeates and the indian began to give us hope that we were finally closing in upon our quarry.

the dragging length of the chase grew upon two conditions. from the beginning the kidnappers were able to increase their lead by stretching out the days and borrowing from the nights; also, they were doubtless well provisioned, and they had horses for the captives and their impedimenta. but as for us, we could follow only while the daylight let us see the trail; and though we ran well at first, the lack of proper food soon took toll of speed.

so now, though the hoof prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer—could hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent us double.

the tenth day, as i well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher with every added mile of westering.

the sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert. in the steepest part of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, ephraim yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the catawba, running at yeates's heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped and swallowed him.

a moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless noontide stillness, and jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us. then, like a distorted echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer's rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all a-clamor with mocking repetitions.

"missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!" growled the marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload. "that there's what comes o' being so dad-blame' hongry that ye can't squinch fair atween the gun-sights. i reckon ez how ye'd better hunker down and lie clost, you two. 'twouldn't s'prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o' them sharp-p'inted sticks in his—the lord be praised for all his marcies! the chief's got him!"

but uncanoola had not. he came in presently, his black eyes snapping with disappointment, saying in answer to yeates's question that the yell had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old borderer's bullet.

"chelakee snake heap slick: heap quick dodge," was all we could get out of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.

this incident told us plainly enough that the kidnappers were now but a little way ahead, and that their rear-guard scouts were holding us well in hand. so from that on we went as men whose lives are held in pawn by a hidden foe, looking at every turn for an ambushment. nevertheless, we were not waylaid again; and when at length the long hot afternoon drew to its close with the mountain of peril well behind us, we had neither seen nor heard aught else of the cherokees.

that night we camped, fireless and foodless, on the banks of a swift-flowing stream in a valley between two great mountains. we reached this stream a little before dark, and since the trail led straight into the water, we would have put this obstacle behind us if we could. but though the little river was not above five or six poles in width it was exceeding swift and deep; so impassable, in truth, that we were moved to wonder how the captive party had made shift to cross.

we guessed at it a while, richard and i, and then gave it up until we might have the help of better daylight. but the old borderer's curiosity was not so readily postponed. cutting a slim pole from a sapling thicket, he waded in cautiously, anchoring himself by the drooping branches of the willows whilst he prodded and sounded and proved beyond a doubt that the current was over man-head deep, and far too rapid for swimming.

satisfied of this, he came out, dripping, and with a monitory word to us to keep a sharp lookout, disappeared up-stream in the growing dusk, his long rifle at the trail, and his body bent to bring his keen old eyes the nearer to the ground.