So now, though the hoof prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer—­could hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent us double.

The tenth day, as I well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher with every added mile of westering.

The sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert.  In the steepest part of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, Ephraim Yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the Catawba, running at Yeates’s heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped and swallowed him.

A moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless noontide stillness, and Jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us.  Then, like a distorted echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer’s rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all a-clamor with mocking repetitions.

“Missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!” growled the marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload.  “That there’s what comes o’ being so dad-blame’ hongry that ye can’t squinch fair atween the gun-sights.  I reckon ez how ye’d better hunker down and lie clost, you two.  ‘Twouldn’t s’prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o’ them sharp-p’inted sticks in his—­The Lord be praised for all His marcies! the chief’s got him!”

But Uncanoola had not.  He came in presently, his black eyes snapping with disappointment, saying in answer to Yeates’s question that the yell had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old borderer’s bullet.

“Chelakee snake heap slick:  heap quick dodge,” was all we could get out of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.

This incident told us plainly enough that the kidnappers were now but a little way ahead, and that their rear-guard scouts were holding us well in hand.  So from that on we went as men whose lives are held in pawn by a hidden foe, looking at every turn for an ambushment.  Nevertheless, we were not waylaid again; and when at length the long hot afternoon drew to its close with the mountain of peril well behind us, we had neither seen nor heard aught else of the Cherokees.