"Yaw."
Without waiting for any thing further, Crockett struck his mustang into a gallop, his hoofs sounding upon the earth with a dangerous loudness, when there was such necessity for silence in all their movements.
A few minutes only were necessary to bring him back to the main path, where he looked keenly about in the gloom for some sign of his young friends; but none was to be seen, and he heard only the sigh of the winds and the soft flow of the creek.
Had they already passed?
The question was so important that Crockett thought himself justified in taking rather imprudent means to answer; so he galloped some distance down the path, and then reining up, shouted:
"Hilloa!"
He repeated the call several times, and his voice echoed among the trees with a startling force, but no welcome response came back in the shape of a signal from Sebastian. Then he dismounted from his horse, and advancing to where the moonlight shone upon the ground, carefully scrutinized it as an Indian does when looking for the signs of the passing of a foe.
But he was unable to detect any thing at all, and so he retraced his steps to the "junction," convinced that the lovers were still between him and the cabin.
"Whoa! whoa! Doonderation! Why you don't shtop?"
As these excited words reached the ears of the hunter he became sensible of a furious tearing forward of some animal, and while he was looking up the path to see what it meant, the horse of Hans Bungslager came forward on a trot, that threatened to displace every thing upon her back, and jolting the rider like so much jelly.