If a war party could spend a night in baiting us and slaying our horses, there could be no very instant orders for the road.

If this were so, a bold man might yet reach the Border line.

At that moment it seemed to me a madman's errand.

Even if I slipped past the watchers in the woods and the glens, the land between would be strewn with fragments of the Cherokee host, and I had not the Indian craft.

But it was very seriously borne in upon me that 'twas my duty to try.