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"Catawba's waters smiled again To see her Sumter's soul in arms! And issuing from each glade and glen, Rekindled by war's fierce alarms, Thronged hundreds through the solitude Of the wild forests, to the call Of him whose spirit, unsubdued, Fresh impulse gave to each, to all." On the 5th of August, 1780, the detachments of the patriots met again at Land's Ford, on the Catawba.
"At that she stood before him bravely, and I saw that all the time she had had the Catawba's knife hidden in the folds of her gown. 'You have spoken truth for once, Captain Falconnet; I shall be free, she said. 'Come and tell me when you have added these to your other murders." "And then?"
Though I made sure she did not love me, had never loved me as other than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond the pale of sentiment, yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give her leave to call upon me in her hour of need. Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's.
The Catawba's negative was his guttural "Wah," and Ephraim Yeates, having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length. "Mighty cur'is, ez I was a-saying.
"I reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping on the redcoats' trail, ez I allow. Ain't we, Chief, hey?" The Catawba's assent was a guttural "Wah!" and Ephraim Yeates went on to explain. "Ye see, 'tis this-away.
And now I come upon another of those flitting instants so crowded with happenings that the swiftest pen must seem to make them lag. 'Twas all in a heart-beat, as it were: the Catawba's freeing of us; his flinging us to earth behind the tree; a spurt of blinding yellow flame from the foot of the powder-cliff, and a booming, jarring shock like that of an earthquake.
But I undertook to cool the Indian's ardor, explaining that the redcoat soldiers were the Long-knife's brothers, in a way, not to be slain save in honorable battle. I am not sure whether I earned the Catawba's contempt, or his pity for my weakness; but since he was loyal to the son of his old benefactor first, and a savage afterward, he yielded the point.
After this we went on without mishap, and with no hardship greater than that of living solely upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind, or of the Catawba's.
He had drawn the scattered embers together, fanning them ablaze again, and had sought and found the arrow. It was a blunt-head reed and no war shaft. And around the middle of it, tightly wrapped and tied with silken threads, was a little scroll of parchment. "'Tis the Catawba's arrow," said Jennifer, though how he knew I could not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.
Truly, the Catawba's wolves might find an easy A chattering scream of agony sent shrill and sharp upon the stillness of the night halted me and broke the gibing comment in the midst. I stood and listened. The cry rang out again; then I loosed the Andrea in its scabbard and fell a-running, though the half-healed wound scanted me sorely of the breath I wanted.
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