The negro workmen felt that this was no place for neutrals and they dropped their shovels and made a rush for the mouth of the Gap. The Confederate soldiers stood for a minute, but as they saw Morford rushing toward them, they broke and followed the workmen. The scout chased them until he saw that they were well on their way and then started back along the ridge chuckling to himself over the way in which they had scattered. He laughed too soon. The Confederates had not gone far before they found out the trick which had been played upon them. They turned back and in a short time fifty men were riding along the ridge at full speed to capture the Yankee who had fooled them so. Unfortunately for Morford, he had kept to the path along the ridge which was better going, but which offered very little chance of escape, since on one side was a sheer precipice while on the other was a long, bare slope which offered no place for concealment. From the top of a little knoll he caught sight of the Confederates before they saw him. At that time they were only a half mile behind. The scout tried to escape by running far out on a rocky spur which jutted out over the Gap and which was filled with trees, hoping that he might dodge in among these, double on his pursuers and so get away. The same officer, however, whom he had unhorsed caught sight of him as he ran from one tree to another and with a tremendous shout, the whole band galloped after him at full speed. Morford had hoped that as the way led up a steep hill covered with rocks, his pursuers would have to dismount, but they were riding horses which had been bred in the mountains and which were trained to go up and down hill-paths like goats. They gained on him fast. Spreading out they cut off every chance of his escaping back to the slope or skirting their ranks. There was nothing left for him to do except to go on and on to the very edge of the precipice. The scout knew that if he were caught he would be hung on the nearest tree and that knowledge was a considerable incentive to keep ahead of his pursuers as long as possible. He ran as he had never run before and as he could follow paths too narrow for the horses, for a while he managed to hold his lead. He could see, however, that some of the band had ridden around the slope and held the whole base of the spur so that it would be only a question of time before he would be hunted out and caught. He was running now along the very edge of the precipice which dropped six hundred feet to the rocks below. The gorge narrowed until finally at one point it was not more than twenty feet wide. This was too wide, however, for the scout to clear, even if he were not wearing heavy boots and carrying a rifle. Several feet below where he stood, on the opposite shelf a hickory tree had grown out so that some of the branches extended within ten feet of his side of the gorge. Below that tree was a fissure through the rock down which a desperate man might possibly clamber.