The sound as of some large body rushing through the air, tearing through the slender bushes, struggling for life on the side of the rocky cañon, fell upon their ears, and the foot of the Mormon was stayed as he placed it in the stirrup. Different far from the fall of the huge stones was this strange noise; and for a moment they all stood doubtful and terrified. Urged on, however, by the Elder, they at length advanced. As they turned the point ahead, the body of an Indian, swinging directly over the ragged rocks, suspended by a slender root, and with fully a hundred feet between him and the bottom, met their appalled gaze.
“There is one of your red-skins,” cried Elder Thomas, “punished for his crimes even while on the earth!”
“Shall we not try to save him?” asked one of his companions.
“It is not given unto the Lord’s anointed to stoop to that which is unclean.”
“But he is a man, and will be dashed to atoms.”
“He is an Indian.”
“But you will not let him hang in that awful way? See I the root to which he clings is parting! The earth is breaking away from around it; and then—great heavens! he is—”
“No, not gone! and yet it would be monstrous to leave him in such danger. I, even I, will save him, as did the Gentiles the Prophet Joseph!”—and snatching a rifle from one of his nearest followers, he raised it, and fired.
The report, and the swift whizzing of the bullet as it cut the air, awoke the countless echoes of the rocky cañon with grand reverberations; and the smoke, lifting like a fleecy vail, showed them that the Indian had disappeared. A stone, loosened from its scanty earth-bed, most probably by his fall, rolled down to their very feet; but what had become of the swarthy form that a moment before hung above the abyss, suspended, as if by a thread.
“The ravens will find him in the holes of the rocks,” said Thomas, coolly returning the rifle to its owner, and without bestowing the slightest attention on the horror that ran through the group at this unnatural murder.