In the gloomiest depths of this defile we came upon the hunter's stumbling-block. A tributary stream, issuing from a low cavern in the right-hand cliff, crossed the Indian path and the chasm at a bound and plunged noisily into the flood of the larger river. On the hither side of this barrier stream the trail of the powder convoy led plainly down into the water; and, so far as one might see, that was the end of it. As we made sure, we left no stone unturned in the effort to solve the mystery. No horse, ridden or led, could have lived to cross the pouring torrent of the main river, or to wade up or down its bed; and if the cavalcade had turned up the barrier stream its progress must have ended abruptly against the sheer wall of the cliff at the entrance to the low-arched cavern whence the tributary came into being. But if Falconnet and his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrier stream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossed it. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presently came out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoof print, new or old. "Well, now; I'll be daddled if this here ain't about the beatin'est thing I ever chugged up ag'inst," was the old borderer's comment, when we had flogged our wits to small purpose in the search for some clue to the mystery. "What's your mind about it, hey, Chief?" Uncanoola shook his head. "Heap plenty slick. No go up-stream, no go down, no cross over, no go back. Mebbe go up like smoke--w'at?" The hunter shook his head and would by no means admit the alternative. "Ez I allow, that would ax for a merricle; and I reckon ez how when the good Lord sends a chariot o' fire after sech a clanjamfrey as this'n o' the hoss-captain's, it'll be mighty dad-blame' apt to go down 'stead of up." We were standing on the brink of the barrier stream no more than a fisherman's cast from the black rock-mouth that spewed it up from its underground maw. While the hunter was speaking, the Catawba had lapsed into statue-like listlessness, his gaze fixed upon the eddying flood which held the secret of the vanished cavalcade. Suddenly he came alive with a bound and made a quick dash into the water. What he retrieved was only a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeates caught at it eagerly. "Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!" he exclaimed. "It do take an Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out! Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o' sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?" I shook my head, seeing no special significance in the token; and Dick asked: "What will it be, Ephraim, now that it is caught?" The old man looked his pity for our dullard wit, and then set a moiety of it in words. "Well, well, now; I'm fair ashamed of ye! What all d'ye reckon blackened the end o' this bit o' pine-branch?"