As I looked, the two great pistols belched in the very
faces of the nearest Cherokees; and in the momentary check the firearms
made, the basket-hilted claymore went to work, rising and falling like a
weaver's beam.
I saw no more; but some heart-bursting minutes later, when Jennifer came
racing on behind to share the flight his heroic stand had made a
possibility, the swelling sob choked me once again; and when I thought
of what this his rescue of me meant to him, I could have blubbered like
a boy.
But there was little time or space to give remorse an inning. The
Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels.
And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted
men: "A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the road! Gallop, you
devils!"
We ran in Indian file, I at the chief's heels and Jennifer at mine. I
followed the Catawba blindly; and being as yet little better than half a
man in breath and muscle, was well-nigh spent before we crashed down
through a tangled briar thicket into the river road.
We were in time, but with no fraction of a minute to spare. We could
hear the _pad-pad-pad_ of the light-footed runners close upon us,
following now by the noise we made; and on our left the air was
trembling to the thunder of the mounted men coming at a break-neck
gallop down the road.
"Thank God!" says Richard, with a quick eyeshot to right and left in the
lesser gloom of the open. "I was afeard even the chief might miss the
place in the dark.
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