By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter
might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the
stoical Catawba was all a-grin. So, seeing I was like to lose
countenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with my
capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.

For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my
senior, he was a pretty handful. 'Twas much like trying to catch a fall
out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. None the less, after some
wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his
promise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman's
trick--a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift--which sent
him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the
landslide.

The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.
When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeates
sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.

"Put it there, stranger," he said. "I reckon ez how that settles it. Old
Eph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn _and_ pan-meat
with the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing a
friend in the big woods--a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest
or'narily whop his weight in wildcats--why, old Eph's your man; from now
on, _if_ not sooner." And in this wise began an alliance the like of
which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, these
colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.

As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily,