"Yes, we are; but you and your soldiers, Mr. Drummond! Every shot made me fear you were hit," cries poor little Ruth, her eyes filling, her lips quivering. Then, just as Drummond is holding forth a hand, perhaps it is an arm, too, she points up to the rock above where Walsh is evidently exercised about something. He has dropped his gun, picked up the glasses, and is gazing down the range to the south.
"Perhaps he sees some of our fellows coming for good this time. Four of them tried it awhile ago, but were probably attacked some miles below here and fell back on the main body. They'll be along before a great while, and won't it be glorious if they bring back the safe and all?" He says this by way of keeping up their spirits, then, once more wearily, but full of pluck and purpose, he climbs the rugged path and creeps to Walsh's side.
"Is it any of our men you see?" he whispers.
"Divil a wan, sir! it's more of thim infernal Apaches."
Drummond takes the glass and studies the dim and distant group with the utmost care. Apaches beyond doubt, a dozen, and coming this way, and these, too, have a couple of horses. Can they have overpowered his men, ambushed and murdered them, then secured their mounts? Is the whole Chiricahua tribe, reinforced by a swarm from the Sierra Blanca, concentrating on him now? The silence about him is ominous. Not an Indian has shown along the range for half an hour, and now these fellows to the east are close to the copse. In less than twenty minutes there will be five times his puny force around him. Is there no hope of rescue?
Once more he turns to the east, across the shimmering glare of that parched and tawny plain, and strains his eyes in vain effort to catch sight of the longed-for column issuing from the opposite valley, but it is hopeless. The hot sun beats down upon his bruised and aching head and sears his bloodshot eyes. He raises his hand in mute appeal to heaven, and at the instant there is a flash, a sharp report not thirty yards away, an angry spat as the leaden missile strikes the shelving top of his parapet and goes humming across the gorge, a stifled shriek from Ruth looking fearfully up from below, an Irish oath from Walsh as he whirls about to answer the shot, and Drummond can barely repress a little gasp.
"Narrow squeak that, Walsh! That devil has crawled close up on us. Can you see him?"
"Begad, sir, I can see nothing at all but rocks, rocks, rocks. How can a man fight anyway agin' human beings that crawl like snakes?"
Zip! Another shot close at hand, too, and from another unseen foe. The first came from somewhere among the bowlders down to the southeast, and this second whizzed from across the cañon. A little puff of blue smoke is floating up from among the rocks fifty yards or so to the north of the narrow slit.
Crouching lower, Drummond calls across to Costigan, posted as the easternmost of the two men on the opposite side,—