“Didn’t fancy de way I swung dat pick round! I was kinder loose wid it, an’ if I’d let it drap on him, it would’ve made him dance.”
It looked very much as if our friends, in capturing the Mohave, had, to use a common expression, secured an “elephant.” What to do with him, was the all-important question, now that he was in their power. Being without any warlike implements, he was comparatively harmless, and, as there was no escape for him, except through the passage by which he had entered, it was hardly to be supposed that, so long as he was unmolested, he would indulge in any performances likely to bring down the wrath of his captors upon him.
Withdrawing to the opposite side of the cave, (which was not more than a dozen feet in diameter) he stood silent and sullen, while Edwin Inwood, with his loaded and cocked rifle, watched him with the vigilance of a cat. George Inwood, feeling that nothing was to be apprehended from the present shape of affairs within their subterranean home, passed up the narrow entrance to where Jim was, in order to learn how matters stood there.
At the moment of reaching his sable friend, the discharge of a gun was heard, and Jim hastily retreated on his hands and knees a few feet.
“Are you hit?” inquired Inwood in some alarm.
“Yes, but dey didn’t hurt me; dey hit me on de head!”
“Can they not force back the stone?”
“Not if we can git close up behind it.”
The negro spoke the truth; for, when immediately in the rear of the immense boulder, they could hold it against the combined efforts of any number of men on the outside, and, at the same time, keep themselves invisible, while, by remaining in their present position, they ran every risk of being struck. Consequently, no time was lost in creeping into the proper place, where, for the time being, they felt themselves masters of the situation.
Having successfully staved off all danger for the present, the question naturally arose, how was this matter to end? The gold hunters were walled up in a cave, with plenty of arms and ammunition, little food and no water. The Mohaves, if they chose so to do, could keep them there until they perished from thirst or starvation.