"O Jack!" was all I had in answer; but when he had found a tongue to babble out his joy, I learned the why and wherefore. Once more grim death had reached for me, lying await in the twirled tomahawk that set me dreaming of my mother's lap and lullaby. For a week I had lain here upon the bed of pine-tufts, poised upon the brink of the death pit with only my dear lad to hold and draw me back.
"A week?" I queried, when he had named the interval. "And you have been here all the time?"
"I've never left you, save to forage for the pot," he admitted. "I dared not leave you, Jack."
"But where are we?" I would ask.
"In a den on the river's edge, a mile or more above your sacked cabin. 'Tis some dodge-hole hollowed out by the Catawbas long ago and shared since by them and the bears, judging from the stinking reek of it. Uncanoola steered me hither the night of the raid."
"Then the chief came off safely?" I said, falling into a dumb and impotent rage that the saying of two words should scant me so of strength to say a third.
"Right as a trivet—scalps and all," laughed Jennifer. "He'll be the envy of every warrior in the tribe when he vaunts himself at the Catawbas' council fire."
I let it rest a while at that, casting about for words to shape a hungrier question.
"Have you no news?" I asked, at length.
"Little or none," he answered shortly.