With this background fit for the staging of a scene in Dante Alighieri's tragic comedy, the looming mountains, the upper air graying on to dusk, and the solemn forest aisles full of lurking shadows, you are to picture the old frontiersman, bareheaded and on his knees, pouring forth his soul in all the sonorous phrase of Holy Writ, now in thanksgiving, and now in most terrible beseechings that all the vials of Heaven's wrath might be poured out upon our enemies.
His face, commonly a leather mask to hide the man behind it, was now ablaze with the fire of zealotry; and, truly, in these his spasm-fits of supplication he stood for all that is most awe-inspiring and unnerving, asking but a little stretch of the imagination to figure him as one of those old iron-hard prophets of denunciation come back to earth to be the herald of the wrath of God.
'Twas close upon actual nightfall when the old man rose from his knees and, with the rising, put off the beadsman and put on the shrewd old Indian fighter. Followed some hurried counselings as to how we should proceed, and in these the hunter set the pace for us as his age and vast experience in woodcraft gave him leave.
His plan had all the merit of simplicity. 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. Here we should leave the horses well hidden and secured, make our way down the ravine, and, with the stream for a guide, follow the sunken valley to the camp at its lower end. Once on the ground without having given the alarm, we might hope to free the captives under cover of the darkness; and our retreat up the valley would be far less hazardous than any open flight by way of the unexplored road the powder train had used.
So said the old backwoodsman; but neither Dick nor I would agree to this in toto. Dick argued that while we were killing time in the roundabout advance we should be leaving Margery wholly at the mercy of the baronet, and that every hour of delay was full of hideous menace to her. Hence he proposed that three of us should carry out the hunter's plan, leaving the fourth to take the hint given by the charred stick and the swimming ambush crew, and so penetrating to the valley by the stream cavern, be at hand to strike a blow for our dear lady's honor in case of need.
"'Tis a thing to be done, and I am with you, Dick," said I. This before Ephraim Yeates could object. "Should there be need for any, two blades will be better than one. If it come to blows and we are killed or taken, Yeates and the chief must make the shift to do without our help."
As you would guess, the old hunter demurred to this halving of our slender force, but we over-persuaded him. If all went well, we were to rendezvous on the scene of action to carry out the plan of rescue. But if our adventure should prove disastrous, Yeates and Uncanoola were to bide their time, striking in when and how they might.
Touching this contingency, I drew the old man aside for a word in private.
"If aught befall us, Ephraim,—if we should be nabbed as we are like to be,—you are not to let any hope of helping us lessen by a feather's weight the rescue chance of the women. You'll promise me this?"
"Sartain sure; ye can rest easy on that, Cap'n John. But don't ye go for to let that rampaging boy of our'n upsot the fat in the fire with any o' his foolishness. He's love-sick, he is; and there ain't nothing in this world so ridic'lous foolish ez a love-sick boy—less'n 'tis a love-sick gal."