The men can come four abreast." The water was about a foot deep, and despite their care eight hundred hoofs made a considerable splashing, but the creek soon turned around a hill and led on through dense forest.

Sherburne and Harry were satisfied that no Union horseman had either seen or heard them, and they followed Lankford with absolute confidence.

Now and then the hoofs of a stumbling horse would grind on the stones, but there was no other noise save the steady marching of two hundred men through water.
The things that Lankford had asserted continued to come true.

The creek presently flowed between banks fifty feet high, rocky and steep as a wall.

But the stone bed of the creek was almost as smooth as a floor, and they stopped here a while to rest and let their horses drink.
The enclosing walls were not more than fifty or sixty feet across the top and it was very dark in the gorge.