He brought me his tin cup full of rum and water. I drank a small portion of it, then rinsed throat and mouth, still standing.
"Butler and Ross, with a thousand rifles and baggage-wagons, are making for the Tribes Hill ford," I said. "A hundred Cayugas, Mohawks, and Tories burned Oswaya just after sunrise, and are this moment pushing on to Johnstown. We've got to get there before them, Elerson."
"Yes, sir," he said simply, glancing at the flint in his rifle.
"Is there any chance of our picking up the scout?"
"If we don't, it's a dead scout for sure," he returned gravely. "Tim Murphy wasn't lookin' for scalpin' parties from the north."
I handed him his cup, tightened belt and breast-straps, trailed rifle, and struck the trail at a jog; and behind me trotted David Elerson, famed in ballad and story, which he could not read—nor could Tim Murphy, either, for that matter, whose learning lay in things unwritten, and whose eloquence flashed from the steel lips of a rifle that never spoke in vain.
Like ice-chilled wine the sweet, keen mountain air blew in our faces, filtering throat and nostrils as we moved; the rain that the frost had promised was still far away—perhaps not rain at all, but snow.
On we pressed, first breath gone, second breath steady; and only for the sickening foreboding that almost unnerved me when I thought of Elsin, I should not have suffered from the strain.
Somewhere to the west, hastening on parallel to our path, was strung out that pack of raiding bloodhounds; farther south, perhaps at this very instant entering Johnstown, moved the marauders from the north. A groan burst from my dry lips.
Slowing to a walk we began to climb, shoulder to shoulder, ascending the dry bed of a torrent fairly alive with partridges.