But Ralph was too much afflicted by the wretched condition of Edith, whom his gratitude for the life she had bestowed had made the mistress paramount of his soul, to give much heed to any one but herself; and it was only by dint of hard questioning that Roland drew from him, little by little, an account of the causes which had kept him in the vicinity of the travellers, and finally brought him to the scene of combat.
It had been, it appeared, an eventful and unlucky day with the horse-thief, as well as the soldier. Aside from his adventure on the beech-tree, enough in all truth to mark the day for him with a black stone, he had been peculiarly unfortunate with the horses to which he had so unceremoniously helped himself. The gallant Briareus, after sundry trials of strength with his new master, had at last succeeded in throwing him from his back; and the two-year-old pony, after obeying him the whole day with the docility of a dog, even when the halter was round his neck, and carrying him in safety until within a few miles of Jackson's Station, had attempted the same exploit, and succeeded, galloping off on the back track towards his home. This second loss was the more intolerable, since Stackpole, having endured the penalty for stealing him, considered himself as having a legal, Lynch-like right to the animal, which no one could now dispute. He therefore returned in pursuit of the pony, until night arrested his footsteps on the banks of the river, which, the waters still rising, he did not care to cross in the dark. He had, therefore, built a fire by the road-side, intending to camp-out till morning.
"And it was your fire, then, that checked us?" cried Roland, at this part of the story,—"it was your light we took for the watch-fire of Indians?"
"Injuns you may say," quoth Stackpole, innocently, "for thar war a knot of 'em I seed sneaking over the ford; and jist as I was squinting a long aim at 'em, hoping I might smash two of 'em at alick, slam-bang goes a feller that had got behind me, 'tarnal death to him, and roused me out of my snuggery. Well, sodger, then I jumps into the cane, and next into the timber; for I reckoned all Injun creation war atter me. And so I sticks fast in a lick; and then to sumtotalise, I wallops down a rock, eend foremost, like a bull-toad: and, 'tarnal death to me, while I war scratching my head, and wondering whar I came from, I heerd the crack of the guns across the river, and thought of anngelliferous madam. 'Tarnal death to me, sodger, it turned me wrong side out! and while I war axing all natur' how I war to get over, what should I do but see the old sugar-trough floating in the bushes,—I seed her in a strick of lightning. So pops I in, and paddles I down, till I comes to the rocks,—and ar'n't they beauties? 'H'yar goes for grim death and massacreation,' says I, and tuck the shoot; and if I didn't fetch old dug-out through slicker than snakes, and faster than a well-greased thunderbolt, niggurs ar'n't niggurs, nor Injuns Injuns: and, strannger, if you axes me why, h'yar's the wharfo'—'twar because I thought of anngelliferous madam! Strannger, I am the gentleman to see her out of a fight; and so jist tell her thar's no occasion for being uneasy; for, 'tarnal death to me, I'll mount Shawnees, and die for her, jist like nothing."
"Wretch that you are," cried Roland, whose detestation of the unlucky cause of his troubles, revived by the discovery that it was to his presence at the ford they owed their last and most fatal disappointment, rendered him somewhat insensible to the good feelings and courage which had brought the grateful fellow to his assistance,—"you were born for our destruction; every way you have proved our ruin: but for you my poor kinswoman would have been now in safety among her friends. Had she left you hanging on the beech, you would not have been on the river, to cut off her only escape, when pursued close at hand by murderous savages."
The reproach, now for the first time acquainting Stackpole with the injury he had, though so unintentionally and innocently, inflicted upon his benefactress; and the sight of her, lying apparently half-dead at his feet, wrought up the feelings of the worthy horse-thief to a pitch of desperate compunction, mingled with fury.
"If I'm the crittur that holped her into the fix, I'm the crittur to holp her out of it. 'Tarnal death to me, whar's the Injuns? H'yar goes to eat 'em!"
With that, he uttered a yell,—the first human cry that had been uttered for some time, for the assailants were still resting on their arms,—and rushing up the ravine, as if well acquainted with the localities of the Station, he ran to the ruin, repeating his cries at every step, with a loudness and vigour of tone that soon drew a response from the lurking enemy.
"H'yar you 'tarnal-temporal, long-legged, 'tater-headed paint-faces!" he roared, leaping from the passage floor to the pile of ruins before the door of the hovel (where Emperor yet lay ensconced, and whither Roland followed him), as if in utter defiance of the foemen whom he hailed with such opprobrious epithets,—"h'yar you bald head, smoke-dried, punkin-eating red-skins! you half-niggurs! you 'coon-whelps! you snakes! you varmints! you raggamuffins what goes about licking women and children, and scar'ring-anngelliferous madam! git up and show your scalp-locks; for 'tarnal death to me, I'm the man to take 'em—cock-a-doodle-doo!"
And the valiant horse-thief concluded his warlike defiance with such a crow as might have struck consternation to the heart not merely of the best game-cock in Kentucky, but of the bird of Jove itself. Great was the excitement it produced among the warriors. A furious hubbub was heard to arise among them, followed by many wrathful voices exclaiming in broken English, with eager haste, "Know him dah! cuss' rascal! Cappin Stackpole!—steal Injun hoss!" And the' "steal Injun hoss!" iterated and reiterated by a dozen voices, and always with the most iracund emphasis, enabled Roland to form a proper conception of the sense in which his enemies held that offence, as well as of the great merits and wide-spread fame of his new ally, whose mere voice had thrown the red-men into such a ferment.