nd when that was spent or spoiled we did as we
could, being never comfortably filled, I think, and oftener haggard and
enfeebled for the want of food. Since we dared not stop to go aside for
game, the Catawba would set over-night snares for rabbits; and for
another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along
the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. In this
haphazard hunting nothing ever fell to Jennifer's skilless clubbing, or
to mine; but the old borderer and the Indian were better marksmen, and
now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to
the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the
famine edge of hunger.

For all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on
any lip of turning back. With Margery's desperate need to key us to the
unflinching pitch, Richard and I would go on while there was strength to
set one foot before the other. But for the old borderer and the Indian
there was no such bellows to blow the fire of perseverance. None the
less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and
held us to it; the Catawba Spartan-proud and uncomplaining; the old
hunter no whit less tireless and enduring. At this far-distant day I can
close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates,
striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry
and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest
discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder.
Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been
less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his
own would have shamed us into following where he led.

We had been ten days in this starving wilderness, driving onward at the
pace that kills and making the most of every hour of daylight, before
Yeates and the Indian began to give us hope that we were finally closing
in upon our quarry.

The dragging length of the chase grew upon two conditions. From the
beginning the kidnappers were able to increase their lead by stretching
out the days and borrowing from the nights; also, they were doubtless
well provisioned, and they had horses for the captives and their
impedimenta. But as for us, we could follow only while the daylight let
us see the trail; and though we ran well at first, the lack of proper
food soon took toll of speed.

So now, though the hoof