"The cattle have run to the Congarees by this time!" declared another pessimistically.
"And it was you that shot the wolf!" cried "X" rancorously.
"The herders are holding us responsible and have sent an ambassador," explained John Ronackstone, anxiously knitting his brows, "to inform us that not a horse of the pack-train from Blue Lick Station shall pass down to Charlestown till we indemnify them for the loss of the cattle."
"Gadso! they can't all be lost!" exclaimed old Mivane floutingly.
"No, no! the herders go too far for damages—too far! They are putting their coulter too deep!" said a farmer fresh from the field. He had still a bag of seed-grain around his neck, and now and again he thrust in his hand and fingered the kernels.
"They declare they'll seize our skins," cried another ambiguously,—then, conscious of this, he sought to amend the matter,—"Not the hides we wear,"—this was no better, for they were all arrayed in hides, save Richard Mivane. "Not the hides that we were born in, but our deerhides, our peltry,—they'll seize the pack-train from Blue Lick, and they declare they'll call on the commandant of Fort Prince George to oppose its passing with the king's troops."
An appalled silence fell on the quadrangle,—save for the fresh notes of a mockingbird, perching in jaunty guise on the tower of the blockhouse, above which the rainbow glowed in the radiant splendors of a misty amber sky.
"The king's troops? Would the commandant respond?" anxiously speculated one of the settlers.
The little handful of pioneers, with their main possessions in the fate of the pack-train, looked at one another in dismay.
"And tell me, friend Feather-pate, why did it seem good to you to shoot a wolf in the midst of a herd of cattle?" demanded Richard Mivane.