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When we burst down upon him, Yeates had his piece to his face and was drawing a bead on a stout man in cocked hat and plain regimentals whose horse was curveting and sidling in the nearer shallows; no less a figure, in truth, than my Lord Cornwallis himself, cheering his men on to the attack.
"No; nor to Cleaveland, nor McDowell, nor any. We heard there was to be fighting hereaway, Ephraim Yeates and I, and we came as volunteers." "Good! then I have a thought which may stand for what it is worth. To make the most of this victory over Major Ferguson, Gates should be apprised at once and by a sure tongue; and his Lordship should have the news quickly, too, and in a lump, as you say.
These and the bag of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to heat the baking-stones.
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 rift and crevice in the boundary cliff, it was a most tedious undertaking; and I do remember how my great trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing agony.
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.
His first discovery was that the ford we had found in the darkness served as the river crossing of an ancient and well-used Indian trace. Along this trace from the eastward the powder train had come, no longer ago than mid-afternoon of yesterday; and arguing from this that the night camp of the band would be but a short march to the westward, Yeates had pushed on to feel out the enemy's position.
One by one the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching figures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward the lower valley. Ephraim Yeates chuckled under his breath and smote softly upon his thigh.
"We can ambush like the Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge and run away." "What's that ye're saying, youngster?" The grizzled hunter had finished reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last. "You heard me, Eph Yeates," replied my young captain, curtly.
What he retrieved was only a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeates caught at it eagerly. "Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!" he exclaimed. "It do take an Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out! Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o' sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?"
The redskins have been back to make sure o' what they left behind," said Yeates, in a whisper. "I jing! that's jest the one thing I was a-hoping they'd forget to do. I reckon ez how that spiles our last living chance o' finding anything that mought help slack off on the belly-pinch." So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune favored us.
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