Below us lay a little plain, wedged in between two mountains, and breaking off on one side into a steep glen.  It was just such a shelf as I had seen in the Carolinas, only a hundred times greater, and it lay some five hundred feet below us.  Every part of the hollow was filled with men.  Thousands there must have been, around their fires and teepees, and coming or going from the valley.  They were silent, like all savages, but the low hum rose from the place which told of human life.

I tried to keep my eyes steady, though my heart was beating like a fanner.  The men were of the same light colour and slimness as those I had seen on the edge of the mist in Clearwater Glen.  Indeed, they were not unlike Shalah, except that he was bigger than the most of them.  I was not learned in Indian ways, but a glance told me that these folk never came out of the Tidewater, and were no Cherokees of the hills or Tuscaroras from the Carolinas.  They were a new race from the west or the north, the new race which had so long been perplexing us.  Somewhere among them was the brain which had planned for the Tidewater a sudden destruction.

Shalah slipped noiselessly backward, and I followed him down the scree slope, across the ravine, and then with infinite caution through the sparse woods till we had put a wide shoulder of hill between us and the enemy.  After that we started running, such a pace as made the rush back to the Rappahannock seem an easy saunter.  Shalah would avoid short-cuts for no reason that I could see, and make long circuits in places where I had to go on hands and feet.  I was weary before we set out, and soon I began to totter like a drunken man.  The Indian’s arm pulled me up countless times, and his face, usually so calm, was now sharp with care.  “You cannot fail here, brother,” he would say, “On our speed hang the lives of all.”  That put me on my mettle, for it was Elspeth’s safety I now strove for, and the thought gave life to my leaden limbs.  Every minute the air grew heavier, and the sky darker, so that when about five in the afternoon we passed the Gap and struggled up the last hill to the stockade, it seemed as if night had already fallen.

Elspeth and Ringan were there, and the two trappers had just returned.  I could do nothing but pant on the ground, but Shalah cried out for news of Grey.  He heard that he had gone into the woods with his musket two hours past.  At this he flung up his hands with a motion of despair.  “We cannot wait,” he said to Ringan.  “Close the gate and put every man to his post, for the danger is at hand.”

Ringan gave his orders.  The big log gate was barred, the fire trampled out, and we waited in that thunderous darkness.  A long draught of cold water had revived me, and I could think clearly of Elspeth.  Her bower was in the safest part of the stockade, but she would not stay there, I could see terror in her eyes, but she gave no sign of it.  She made ready our supper of cold meat as if she had no other thought in the world.