"Pop-pop-pop-pa-hoo! Hoo-hoo-oo-oo!" came from the path below, with that hideous power and distinctness of lungs that have chilled so many hearts and whitened so many faces since the white man first intruded on the hunting-grounds of the American Indian. A shrill, dissonant, horrible yell, combining the blind ferocity of the beast with the deadlier rage of man, such as made the poor mother clasp her babe closer to the breast when it rang around the block-houses of Massachusetts and New York in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--such as less than three years ago proved that it was undying in the savage throat, by pealing over the mangled bodies and burned dwellings of the Minnesota massacres. "Good heavens!--what is that?" cried half a dozen of the ladies in a breath. "An Indian war-whoop, certainly!" said one of the gentlemen, his face white as wax at the sudden shock. "It is war time, and they tell me that the rebels yell terribly!" said one of the ladies. "Can it be--" but then the absurdity of the idea struck her and she paused. "Albert Pike was a New England man: perhaps he is here with his Arkansas savages!" said another, whether in jest or earnest no one could well discover. It was surprising how in that one instant the cavalcade had shortened its length--the foremost stopping and the rearmost closing up. Man _is_ a gregarious animal, especially when a little surprised or frightened! Perhaps Horace Townsend had been as badly startled as any of the others, at the first instant; but he possessed some data which the others lacked for discovering the source of the warlike yell. "Do not be alarmed, ladies!" he said, after an instant. "I think there is only one Indian uttering that horrible sound, and you may depend upon it that he is white and no rebel. Yes--see!--here he comes!" They had been, as already indicated, descending a quarter of a mile of most difficult and dangerous path, in which every rider experienced more or less of tremor, and over which the horses were picking their careful way as if they realized that human necks were in peril. At the instant when the attention of the company was thus directed backwards, Halstead Rowan had reached the top of the rise, behind, and was just giving vent to a second and supplemental yell which rang through the woods as if a dozen throats had taken part in it, and which must have been heard half way down the Notch. "Pop-pop-pop-pa-hoo! Hoo-hoo-oo-oo!"