“He’s gone!” shouted the tavern-keeper as he bounded over the threshold.
A guard, who had run to one side, now sounded a second alarm.
“The horses are loose!” he screamed.
“To the woods with the dogs! To the woods! Take command, Polcher! Let the dogs have him if they catch him! Arouse the warriors! That man must not escape!”
[1]. Roosevelt’s “Winning the West.”
CHAPTER IX
POLCHER’S LITTLE RUSE
All night the search for Jackson worried the forest. Sevier slept but little as McGillivray occupied an adjoining room and walked the floor much of the time, pausing only when some messenger came to report or when he deemed it necessary to leave the house to give fresh orders. At sunrise Sevier from his window saw the wearied pack limp into the village, the two keepers staggering behind them, kept moving by the animals’ haul on the leashes. As the dogs were passing the borderer’s position McGillivray ran out of the house and demanded of the keepers—
“Why are you back without the white man?”