XXIV
HOW WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY
Looking back upon the hazards and chance-takings of our adventure in thewilderness, I recall no more promising risk than that we ran by sleepingunsentried within rifle-shot, for aught we knew, of the camp of theenemy.
But touching this, 'tis only on the mimic stage of the romances that theplayers rise to the plane of superhuman sagacity and angel-wit, neverfaltering in their lines nor betraying by slip or tongue-trip theirkinship with common humankind. Being mere mortals we were not soendowed; we were but four outwearied men, well spent in the long chase,with never a leg among us fit to pace a sentry beat nor a decent wakefuleye to keep it company. So, as I have said, we took the risk and slept;would have slept as soundly, I dare say, had the risk been twice asgreat.
We were astir at the earliest graying of the dawn, Richard and I, andwere the laggards of the company at that, since the old hunter wasalready out and away, and the Indian had kindled a fire and wasgrinding more of the parched corn for the morning meal. Dick sat up inhis leaf litter, yawning like a sleepy giant.
"Lord, Jack," said he; "if ever we win out of this coil with a full dayto spare, I mean to sleep the clock hands twice around at a stretch, Ipromise you. 'Twas but a catch, this cat-nap; no more than enough toleave a bad taste in the mouth."
"Aye; but the taste may be washed out," said I. "I am for a dip in theriver; what say you?"
He took me at the word, and we had an eye-opening plunge in thespring-cold flood of the swift little river at the mouth of our ravine.'Twas most marvelous refreshing; and with appetites sharp set andwhetted by the stripping and plunging we were back at the fire in timeto give good day to Ephraim Yeates, at that moment returned with thehindquarters of a fine yearling buck, fresh-killed, across hisshoulders.
Seeing the deer's meat, we would think the old hunter's thrift of thedawn sufficiently accounted for; but when the cuts were a-broil, we weremade to know that the buck was merely a lucky incident in the earlymorning scouting.
Taking time by the forelock, the old borderer had swept a circle ofreconnaissance around our halting place, "to get the p'ints of thecompass," as he would say. His first discovery was that the ford we hadfound in the darkness served as the river crossing of an ancient andwell-used Indian trace. Along this trace from the eastward the powdertrain had come, no longer ago than mid-afternoon of yesterday; andarguing from this that the night camp of the band would be but a shortmarch to the westward, Yeates had pushed on to feel out the enemy'sposition.
For a mile or more beyond the ford he had trailed the convoy easily. TheIndian trace or path, well-trampled by the numerous horses of thecavalcade, followed the up-stream windings of the swift river straightinto the eye of the western mountains. But in the eye itself, a rockydefile where the slopes on each hand became frowning battlements tonarrow valley and stream, the one to a darkling gorge, the other to athundering torrent, the trail was lost as completely as if the powderconvoy had vanished into thin air.
Here was a fresh complication, and one that called for instant action.We had counted upon a battle royal in any attempt to rescue the women;but that Falconnet, impeded as he was by the slow movements of thepowder cargo, could slip away, was a contingency for which we werewholly unprepared.
So, as you would guess, the hunter breakfast was hurriedly despatched;and by the time the sun was shoulder high over the eastern hills we hadbroken camp and crossed the river, and were pressing forward to thegorge of disappearance.
On each hand the mountains rose precipitous, the one on the leftswelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save forits tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper andlower, with a line of cliffs at the top. As we fared on, the valleynarrowed to a mere chasm, with the river thundering along the base ofthe tonsured mountain, and the Indian path hugging the cliff on theright.
In the gloomiest depths of this defile we came upon the hunter'sstumbling-block. A tributary stream, issuing from a low cavern in theright-hand cliff, crossed the Indian path and the chasm at a bound andplunged noisily into the flood of the larger river. On the hither sideof this barrier stream the trail of the powder convoy led plainly downinto the water; and, so far as one might see, that was the end of it.
As we made sure, we left no stone unturned in the effort to solve themystery. No horse, ridden or led, could have lived to cross the pouringtorrent of the main river, or to wade up or down its bed; and if thecavalcade had turned up the barrier stream its progress must have endedabruptly against the sheer wall of the cliff at the entrance to thelow-arched cavern whence the tributary came into being. But if Falconnetand his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrierstream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossedit. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presentlycame out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoofprint, new or old.
"Well, now; I'll be daddled if this here ain't about the beatin'estthing I ever chugged up ag'inst," was the old borderer's comment, whenwe had flogged our wits to small purpose in the search for some clue tothe mystery. "What's your mind about it, hey, Chief?"
Uncanoola shook his head. "Heap plenty slick. No go up-stream, no godown, no cross over, no go back. Mebbe go up like smoke--w'at?"
The hunter shook his head and would by no means admit the alternative."Ez I allow, that would ax for a merricle; and I reckon ez how when thegood Lord sends a chariot o' fire after sech a clanjamfrey as this'n o'the hoss-captain's, it'll be mighty dad-blame' apt to go down 'stead ofup."
We were standing on the brink of the barrier stream no more than afisherman's cast from the black rock-mouth that spewed it up from itsunderground maw. While the hunter was speaking, the Catawba had lapsedinto statue-like listlessness, his gaze fixed upon the eddying floodwhich held the secret of the vanished cavalcade. Suddenly he came alivewith a bound and made a quick dash into the water. What he retrieved wasonly a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeatescaught at it eagerly.
"Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!" he exclaimed. "It do takean Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out!Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o'sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?"
I shook my head, seeing no special significance in the token; and Dickasked: "What will it be, Ephraim, now that it is caught?"
The old man looked his pity for our dullard wit, and then set a moietyof it in words.
"Well, well, now; I'm fair ashamed of ye! What all d'ye reckon blackenedthe end o' this bit o' pine-branch?"
"Why, fire," says Richard, beginning, as I did, to see some glimmeringof light.
"In course. And it come from yonder, didn't it?" pointing to the cavernunder the cliff. "More than that, 'twas cut wi' a hatchet--this freshend of it--no longer ago than last night, at the furdest; the pitch thatthe fire fried out'n it is all soft and gummy, yit. Gentlemen all:whenst we find where this here creek comes out into daylight again we'rea-going to find the hoss-captain and the whole enduring passel o'redskins and redcoats, immejitly, _if_ not sooner!"
What comment this startling announcement would have evoked I know not,for at the moment of its utterance the Catawba went flat upon theground, making most urgent signs for us to do likewise. What he had seenwe all saw a flitting instant later; the painted face of a Cherokeewarrior as a setting for a pair of fierce basilisk eyes peering out ofthe low-arched cavern whence the stream issued, an apparition lookingfor all the world like a dismembered head floating on the surface of theoutgushing flood.
'Twas the old borderer who took the initiative in the swift retreat,and we followed his lead like well-drilled soldiers. A crook in thestream, and the thickset underwood, screened us for the moment from thebasilisk eyes; and in a twinkling we had rolled one after another intothe mimic torrent and were quickly swept down to its mouth.
Here death lay in wait for us in the mad plungings of the main ri
ver;but we made shift to catch at the overhanging branches of the willows inpassing, to draw ourselves out, to scramble up the gorge and to gain agreat boulder on the mountain side whence we could look down upon thescene of our late surprisal.
By this we saw, from the wings, as it were, the setting of the stage fora tragedy which might have been ours. One by one a score of heads withpainted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth. One by onethe glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from thewater, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing thestream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouchingfigures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward the lower valley.
Ephraim Yeates chuckled under his breath and smote softly upon histhigh.
"They tell ez how the good Lord has a mighty tender care for chillernand simples," he whispered. "Whenst we was a-coming a-rampaging up thetrace a hour 'r two ago, I saw the moccasin track o' that there spy, andwas too dad-blame' biggity in my own consate to ax what it mought mean."
"What spy?" says Dick, matching the hunter's low whisper.
"Why, the varmint that tracked me back from here 'twixt dawn anddaybreak, _to_ be sure. He waited till we broke camp and then took outup here ahead of us to tell his chief 'twas e'ena'most time to set thetrap for three white simples and a red one. Friends, I'm a-telling yeplain that the sperrit's a-moving me mighty powerful to get down on myhunkers and--"
"For heaven's sake, don't do it here and now!" gasped Dick. "Let's getout of this spider's-web while we may."
The old hunter postponed his prayerful motion, most reluctantly, as itwould seem, and led the way in a silent withdrawal from the dangerousneighborhood of the ambushment. When we had pushed on somewhat higher upthe gorge and stood on the confines of the upland valley for which itserved as the approach, there was a halt for a council of war.
Since it was now evident that the powder convoy was encamped in somehidden gorge or valley to which the cavern of the underground stream wasone of the approaches, 'twas plain that we must climb to some heightwhence we could command a wider view.
We were all agreed that the cavern entrance could not have been used bythe entire company: this though the conclusion left the vanishing trailan unsolved riddle. For if the women could have been dragged throughthe low-springing arch of the waterway, we knew the horses could not--tosay nothing of the certain destruction of the powder cargo in such apassage.
So we addressed ourselves to the ascent of the northern mountain; thoughRichard and I would first beg a little space in which to drain the waterfrom our boots, and to wring some pounds' weight of it from our clothes.That done, we fell in line once more; and being so fortunate as to hitupon a ravine which led to the cliff-crowned summit, the climb was shornof half its toil and difficulty. Nevertheless, by the sun's height itwas well on in the forenoon before we came out, perspiring, like sappersin a steam bath, upon the mountain top.
As Yeates had guessed, this northern mountain proved to be a loftytable-land. So far as could be seen, the summit was an undulating plain,less densely forested than the valley, but with a thick sprinkling ofpines to make the still, hot air heavy with their resinous fragrance. Asit chanced, our ravine of ascent headed well back from the cliff edge,so we must needs fetch a compass through the pine groves before we couldwin out to any commanding point of view.
The old borderer took his bearings by the sun and laid the coursequartering to bring us out as near as might be on the heights above thegorge. But when we had gone a little way, a thinning of the wood aheadwarned us that we were approaching some nearer break in the table-land.
Five minutes later we four stood on the brink of a precipice, lookingabroad upon one of nature's most singular caprices. Conceive if you cana segment of the table-land, in shape like a broad-bilged man o' war,sunk to a depth of, mayhap, six or seven hundred feet below the generallevel of the plateau. Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer dimension oftwo miles or more, and a breadth of somewhat less than half its length;bound it with a wall-like line of cliffs falling sheer to steep,forested slopes below; prick out a silver ribbon of a stream windingthrough grassy savannas and well-set groves of lordly trees from end toend of the sunken valley; and you will have some picture of the scene welooked upon.
But what concerned us most was a sight to make us crouch quickly lestsharp eyes below should descry us on the sky-line of the cliff. Pitchedon one of the grassy savannas by the stream, so fairly beneath us thatthe smallest cannon planted on our cliff could have dropped a shot intoit, was the camp of the powder train.
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