was set upon hanging a spy of ours. From that
to our little ambushment--"

"I see," said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves. "This Catawba:
is he a man about my age?" Captain Forney laughed. "God He only knows an
Indian's age. But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or
more. I can recall his coming to my father's house when I was but a
little cadger."

At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage,
as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in
the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at
first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of
boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his
firelock and stood before me defenseless.

Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when
the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when
my father had found this young savage lying in the forest,
plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life
and earned an Indian friendship.

"I know this Uncanoola," I said. "My father befriended him in the plague
of '60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe." Then I would ask if
these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question
which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while
his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for
the day's march.

"'Tis liberty or death with us now; we've burnt our bridges behind us,"
he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from
Father Matthieu. "And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man
against his neighbor, 'tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from
the North."

"Measured by this morning's work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of
yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves," I ventured.

He shook his head doubtfully. He was but a boy in years, but war is a
shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting
frontier, had matriculated early.

"You've seen us at our best," he amended. "We can ambush like the
Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge--and run away."

"What's that ye're saying, youngster?" The grizzled hunter had finished
reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of
the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.

"You heard me, Eph Yeates," replied my young captain, c