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Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when my father had found this young savage lying in the forest, plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life and earned an Indian friendship. "I know this Uncanoola," I said.
"The wolves will kill all the black dogs and drink their blood before the moon is awake. Uncanoola has spoken." I sheathed my sword and turned to take the backward trace. "Captain Long-knife will go and fight for his black dogs with wool on their heads?" he queried. "If need be," I asserted. "Wah!" he ejaculated, and at the word was gone as if the earth had swallowed him.
On the morning set for my departure I woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian scalping-knife thrust through it. Dick was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive. "What is it?" I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully. "'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it."
The bodies of the slain 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 dangle and roll about with every restless movement of the horse a hideous death-mask that seemed to mop and mow and stare fearsomely at us with its wide-open glassy eyes.
"Uncanoola?" said I. He nodded. "Where 'bouts Captain Long-knife going?" I told him briefly; whereat he shook his head. "No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him that way," pointing back along the path. "How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?" Though my long exile had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into the stately Indian hyperbole. "Wah!
Jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest fashion, and after all could only say: "You are sure you have the straight of it, Eph?" The borderer appealed to Uncanoola. "Come, Chief; give us the wo'th of your jedgment. Has the old Gray Wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read them sign like they'd ort to be read?"
'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.
"Listen you, in your turn, Mistress Spitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father's house again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marry you for very shame's sake!" It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it has ever been my lot to witness.
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 rendezvous; 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.
I promised on my part and so we went our separate ways in the gathering darkness; though not until the lashings of the packs had been cut and the powder and lead, save such spoil of both as Ephraim Yeates and Uncanoola would reserve, had been spilled into the river.
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