“Don’t you worry yourself, lad,”
he went on, seeing how anxious Tom looked, as they
started with the horses up the canon. “If
Harry and his friends have beaten off the first attack,
you may bet your boots they are safe for some time.
It is clear the red-skins have drawn off, and are
holding a pow-wow as to how they are to try next.
They attacked, you see, just as the day was breaking;
that is their favourite hour, and I reckon Harry must
have been expecting them, and that he and his mates
were prepared.”
UNITED
The canon showed no sign of widening until they had
proceeded a quarter of a mile from the entrance, then
it broadened suddenly for a distance of a hundred
yards.
“There has been a big slip here both sides,”
the miner said, looking round. “It must
have taken place a great many years ago, for the winter
floods have swept away all signs of it, and there are
grass and trees on the slopes. The horses can
find enough to keep them alive here for a day or two,
and that is all we shall want, I hope.”
“It would be a nasty place to get out of, Jerry,
for the cliffs are perpendicular from half-way up.”
“It ain’t likely as there is any place
we could get out without following it to the upper
end, which may be some fifty miles away. I don’t
know the country it runs through, but the red-skins
are pretty certain to know all about it. If they
were to track us here they would never try to fight
their way in, but would just set a guard at the mouth
and at the upper end and starve us out. It is
a good place to hide in, but a dog-goned bad one to
be caught in. However, I hope it ain’t coming
to that. It is we who are going to attack them,
and not them us, and that makes all the difference.
The red-skins can’t have a notion that there
are any other white men in this neighbourhood, and
when we open fire on them it will raise such a scare
for a bit that it will give us a chance of joining
the others if we choose. That of course must depend
on their position.”
They walked back to the mouth of the canon, and had
not to wait long for the return of the Indians.
“Come,” Leaping Horse said briefly, at
once turning and going off at a swift pace.
Jerry asked no questions, but with Tom followed close
on the Indians’ heels. There were bushes
growing among the fallen rocks and debris from the
face of the cliff, and they were, therefore, able to
go forward as quickly as they could leap from boulder
to boulder, without fear of being seen. A quarter
of an hour’s run, and the chief climbed up to
a ledge on the face of the cliff where a stratum harder
than those above it had resisted the effects of the
weather and formed a shelf some twelve feet wide.
He went down on his hands and knees, and keeping close
to the wall crawled along to a spot where some stunted
bushes had made good their hold. The others followed
him, and lying down behind the bushes peered through
them.
