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In vain. Before they could reach the projecting point, the savages had got up, and were clustering around it. At least a score, with spears couched, bows bent, and clubs brandishing, stood ready to receive them.
It was a gauntlet the pursued men might well despair of being able to run. Truly now seemed their retreat cut off, and surely did death appear to stare them in the face.
"We must die, Walt," said the young prairie merchant, as he faced despairingly toward his companion.
"Maybe not yet," answered Wilder, as with a searching glance, he directed his eye along the facade of the cliff.
The red sandstone rose rugged and frowning, full five hundred feet overhead. To the superficial glance it seemed to forbid all chance either of being scaled, or affording concealment. There was not even a boulder below, behind which they might find a momentary shelter from the shafts of the pursuers. For all that, Wild...
"This must be the place," he muttered. "It is, by God!" he added more emphatically, at the same time wrenching his horse around, riding sharp off, and calling to his companion to follow him.
Hamersley obeyed, and rode after, without knowing what next. But, in another instant, he divined the intent of this sudden change in the tactics of his fellow fugitive. For before riding far his eyes fell upon a dark list, which indicated an opening in the escarpment.
It was a mere crack, or chine, scarce so wide as a doorway, and barely large enough to admit a man on horseback; though vertically it traversed the cliff to its top, splitting it from base to summit.
"Off o' yur hoss!" cried Wilder, as he pulled up in front of it, at the same time flinging himself from his own. "Drop the bridle, and leave him behint. One o' 'em'll be enough for what I want, an' let that be myen. Poor critter, it air a pity! But it can't be helped. We must hev some kiver to screen us. Quick, Frank, ...
Painful as it was to abandon his brave steed, Hamersley did as directed without knowing why. The last speeches of the guide were somewhat enigmatical, though he presumed they meant an important signification.
Slipping down from his saddle, he stood by his horse's side, a noble steed, the best blood of his own State, Kentucky, famed for its fine stock. The animal appeared to know that its master was about to part from it. It turned its head towards him; and, with bent neck, and steaming nostrils, gave utterance to a low neig...
Under other circumstances the Kentuckian would have shed tears. For months he and his horse had been as man and man together in many a long prairie journey -- a companionship which unites the traveller to his steed in liens strong as human friendship, almost as lasting, and almost as painful to break. So Frank Hamersle...
But there was no alternative. Behind were the shouting pursuers quickly coming on. He could see their brandished spears glancing in the sun glare. They would soon be within reach, thrusting through his body; their barbed blades piercing him between the ribs.
No time for sentiment nor dallying now, without the certainty of being slain.
He gave one last look at his steed, and then letting go the rein, turned away, as one who, by stern necessity, abandons a friend, fearing reproach for what he does, but without the power to explain it.
For a time the abandoned steed kept its place, with glances inquiringly sent after the master who had forsaken it. Then, as the yelling crew came closer behind, it threw up its head, snorted, and tore off with trailing bridle.
Hamersley had turned to the guide, now also afoot, but still retaining hold of his horse, which he was conducting towards the crack in the cliff, with all his energies forcing it to follow him; for the animal moved reluctantly, as though suspecting danger inside the darksome cleft.
Still urging it on, he shouted back to the Kentuckian, "You go first, Frank! Up into the kanyon, without losin' a second's time. Hyar, take my gun, an' load both, whiles I see to the closin' o' the gap."
Seizing both guns in his grasp, Hamersley sprang into the chine, stopping when he got well within its grim jaws.
Wilder went after, leading his steed, that still strained back upon the bridle.
There was a large stone across the aperture, over which the horse had to straddle. This being above two feet in height, when the animal had got its forelegs over Wilder checked it to a stand. Hitherto following him with forced obedience, it now trembled, and showed a strong determination to go back. There was an expres...
Hamersley, busily engaged in loading the rifles, nevertheless found time to glance at Wilder's doings, wondering what he was about.
"It air a pity!" soliloquised the latter, repeating his former words in similar tones of commiseration. "F'r all that, the thing must be done. If thar war a rock big enough, or a log, or anythin'. No! thar ain't ne'er another chance to make kiver. So hyar goes for a bit o' butcherin'."
As the guide thus delivered himself, Hamersley saw him jerk the bowie knife from his belt, its blade red and still reeking with human gore. In another instant its edge was drawn across the throat of the horse, from which the blood gushed forth in a thick, strong stream, like water from the spout of a pump. The creature...
"It hed to be did; thar war no help for it," said Wilder, as he hurriedly turned towards his companion, adding: "Have you got the guns charged?"
Hamersley made answer by handing him back his own rifle. It was loaded and ready. "Darn the stinkin' cowarts!" cried the guide, grasping the gun, and facing towards the plain. "I don't know how it may all eend, but this'll keep 'em off a while, anyhow."
As he spoke he threw himself behind the body of the slaughtered steed, which, sustained in an upright position between the counterpart walls, formed a safe barricade against the bullets and arrows of the Indians. These, now riding straight towards the spot, made the rocks resound with exclamations of surprise -- shouts...
They took care, however, not to come within range of that long steel-grey tube, that, turning like a telescope on its pivot, commanded a semicircle of at least a hundred yards' radius round the opening in the cliff.
Despite all the earnestness of their vengeful anger, the pursuers were now fairly at bay, and for a time could be kept so.
Hamersley looked upon it as being but a respite -- a mere temporary deliverance from danger, yet to terminate in death. True, they had got into a position where, to all appearance, they could defend themselves as long as their ammunition lasted, or as they could withstand the agony of thirst or the cravings of hunger. ...
These thoughts he communicated to his companion, as soon as they found time to talk.
"Hunger an' thirst ain't nothin' to do wi' it," was Wilder response. "We ain't a goin' to stay hyar not twenty minutes, if this child kin manage it as he intends ter do. You don't s'pose I rushed into this hyar hole like a chased rabbit? No, Frank; I've heern o' this place afore, from some fellers thet, like ourselves,...
"But how do you intend to keep them from following us? You speak of throwing dust in their eyes -- how, Walt?"
"You wait, watch an' see. You won't hev yur patience terrifically tried: for thar ain't much time to spare about it. Thar's another passage up the cliffs, not far off; not a doubt but these Injuns know it; an' ef we don't make haste, they'll git up thar, and come in upon us by the back door, which trick won't do, nohow...
Hamersley promised compliance, and the guide, still kneeling behind the barricade he had so cruelly constructed, commenced a series of manoeuvres that held his companion in speechless conjecture.
He first placed his gun in such a position that the barrel, resting across the hips of the dead horse, projected beyond the tail. In this position he made it fast, by tying the butt with a piece of string to a projecting part of the saddle. He next took the cap from his head -- a coonskin it was -- and set it so that i...
"It's all done now," said the guide, turning away from the carcase and crouching to where his comrade awaited him. "Come on, Frank. If they don't diskiver the trick till we've got time to speed up the clift, then thar's still a chance for us. Come on, an' keep close arter me!"
Hamersley went, without saying a word. He knew that Wilder, well known and long trusted, had a reason for everything he did. It was not the time to question him, or discuss the prudence of the step he was taking. There might be danger before, but there was death -- sure death -- behind them.
Chapter Eleven.
A Descent Into Darkness.
In less than a dozen paces from its entrance the chine opened into a wider space, again closing like a pair of callipers. It was a hollow of elliptical shape -- resembling an old-fashioned butterboat scooped out of the solid rock, on all sides precipitous, except at its upper end. Here a ravine, sloping down from the s...
Neither Walt Wilder nor the young Kentuckian gave thought to such scientific speculations as they retreated through the narrow gap and back into the wider gorge. All they knew or cared for was that a gully at the opposite end was seen to slope upward, promising a path to the plain above.
In sixty seconds they were in it, toiling onward and upward amidst a chaos of rocks where no horse could follow -- loose boulders that looked as if hurled down from the heavens above or belched upward from the bowels of the earth.
The retreat of the fugitives up the ravine, like their dash out of the enclosed corral, was still but a doubtful effort. Neither of them had full confidence of being able eventually to escape. It was like the wounded squirrel clutching at the last tiny twig of a tree, however unable to support it. They were not quite c...
They had plunged into the chasm as drowning men grasp at the nearest thing afloat -- a slender branch or bunch of grass, a straw.
As they now ascended the rock-strewn gorge both had their reflections, which, though unspoken, were very similar. And from these came a gleam of hope. If they could but reach the summit-level of the cliff! Their pursuers could, of course, do the same; but not on horseback. It would then be a contest of pedestrian speed...
If they could reach the crest of the cliff, then all might yet be well; and, cheered by this reflection, they rushed up the rock-strewn ravine, now gliding along ledges, now squeezing their bodies between great boulders, or springing from one to the other -- in the audacity of their bounds rivalling a brace of bighorns...
They had got more than half-way up, when cries came pealing up the glen behind them. Still were they hidden from the eyes of the pursuers. Jutting points of rock and huge masses that lay loose in the bed of the ravine had hitherto concealed them. But for these, bullets and arrows would have already whistled about their...
The fugitives, as already said, had reached more than halfway up the slope, and were beginning to congratulate themselves on the prospect of escape. They even thought of the course they should take on arriving at the summit-level, for they knew that there was an open plain above. All at once they were brought to a stop...