Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep drafts of the grateful outer air.  
"What new wonder is this?" he would ask, with something akin¹ to awe² in his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the answer with our finger-tips.
 
When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most simply. As we made out, we were in a deep crevice³ cut crosswise by the stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern⁴ in the farther wall, was quickly engulfed⁵ again by that lower archway we had just traversed. In some upheaval⁶ of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's face had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep cleft⁷ open to the sky. One end of this crevice chasm—that toward the upland valley—was choked and filled by the debris⁸ of later landslides⁹; but the lower end was open.
 
Through this lower end, as we made no doubt, the powder train had come, turning from the Indian path in the gorge¹⁰ up the bed of the barrier stream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in single file between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and so to pass around the split-off mass and come into the crevice rift¹¹.
 
How the sharp eyes of the old hunter, and those of the Catawba as well, had missed the finding of this squeezing place where the cavalcade¹² had left the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that we might yet need to know all the crooks¹³ and turnings of this outlet¹⁴, we felt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream's edge in the gorge.
 
That done we were ready for a farther advance, and clambering back into the crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and were presently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. This extension of the subterranean¹⁵ waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wide and high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined¹⁶ by tossing pebbles¹⁷ against the arching roof. None the less, 'twas full of crooks and windings¹⁹; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were like to lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching side passages, Richard stopped me with a hand thrust back.
 
"Softly!" he cautioned; "here are their vedettes!"
 
Just beyond the crooking²⁰ elbow the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone to coals showed us two Indian sentries²¹ set to keep the pass. Dick drew his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the great blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he would mutter, as the teeth-chattering suffered him:
 
"What say you, Jack²²? Shall we rush them? There's naught²³ else for it." And then, with a gritting²⁴ oath: "Oh, damn this cursed chilling!"
 
I whispered back that we would wait till he was better fit. He was loath²⁵ to admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary²⁶ delay saved our lives in that strait. While we paused, hugging the shadows in the crooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenly starred with flaring²⁷ flambeaux lighting²⁸ the way for a hasting rabble²⁹ of savages³⁰; and had we been entangled³¹ in the struggle with the two sentinels we should have been taken red-handed.
 
As it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. In the same breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind in which we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged³², reckless of possible pitfalls³³. We were no more than safely out of the main corridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, trooped past our covert³⁴ in full cry, leaving us half smothered³⁵ in the smoky trail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.
 
"Now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so suddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak without coughing to betray ourselves.
 
"Our pony-riding Tuckaseges, doubtless," was Richard's ready answer. "By all the chances, they should have met the Great Bear and his peace-offering out yonder on the trace—which same they did not. So when they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitch hot. God help our tough old Ephraim and the Catawba if these bloodhounds win out in time to overtake them!"
 
"Aye," said I; and then we crept out of our dodge-hole and made ready to go about our business with the sentries.
 
But when we came to peer again around the crooking elbow it would seem that the hurrying search party had fought our battle for us. The watch-fire was there to light a little circle in the gloom, but the watchers were gone. We chanced a guess that they had joined the hue³⁶ and cry, and so we pressed forward, past the handful of embers and into the pit-black depths beyond.
 
Twenty paces farther on it came to playing blind man's buff with the rocky walls again, and measured by the trippings and stumblings 'twas a long Sabbath day's journey to that final turn in the great earth-burrow whence we could see the glimmering³⁷ of the enemy's camp-fires in the sunken valley.
 
"Now God be praised!" quoth Richard most fervently³⁸. "Another hour in this cursed kennel³⁹ with the fever on me and I should be a yammering loose-wit." And I, too, was glad enough to see the stars again, and to be at large beneath them.
 
Emerging from the subterranean way, we held to the camp side of the stream, making an ample circuit to the left to come down upon the enemy's position from the wooded slope behind the encampment. We met no let or hindrance⁴⁰ in this approach. Secure in their stronghold, the Indians had no patrols out; and as for the Englishmen, every mother's son of them,............