He turned and bent to his task with the recklessness of despair, for, even in that dreadful crisis, he thought more of the little fellow than he did of himself. If he could have been assured of his safety, he would have been ready to wheel about and meet his score or more of foes, and fight them single-handed, as Leonidas and his band did at Thermopylæ. But the fate of the two was linked together, and, sink or swim, it must be fulfilled in company.
The narrow, wooded ravine, in which they had taken enforced refuge, was only three or four feet in width, the bottom sloping irregularly upward, at an angle of forty five degrees. So long as this continued, so long could they maintain their laboring ascent to the top. Mickey had strong hopes that, with the advantage of the start, they might reach that point far enough in advance of their pursuers to secure some other concealment that would serve them till nightfall, when they could steal out and try their chances again.
The saplings growing at every inclination afforded them much assistance, as they were able to seize hold with one or both hands, and thus help themselves along. But the vines in many places were of a peculiar running nature and they frequently caught their feet and stumbled; but they were instantly up and at it again. All at once Mickey, who was scarcely an arm’s length in advance, halted so abruptly that Fred ran plump against him.
“Why don’t you go on?” asked the panting lad.
“I can’t. Here’s the end.”
So it was, indeed. While pressing forward with undiminished effort, the Irishman found himself suddenly confronted with a solid, perpendicular wall of rock. The narrow chasm, or fissure, terminated.
It was like a fugitive, his heart beating high with hope, checked in his flight by the obtrusion of the Great Chinese Wall across his path. Mickey looked upward. As he stood, he could, with outstretched arms, touch the wall on his right and left, and kick the one in front—the only open route being in the rear, which was commanded by the Apache party. As he did so, he saw, through the interstices of the interweaving, straggling branches, the clear, blue sky, with the edge of the fissure fully forty feet above his head. His first hope was that some of the saplings around him were lofty enough to permit him to use them as a ladder; but the tallest did not approach within a half dozen yards of the top. They were shut in on every hand.
“We can’t run any further,” said the Irishman, after a hasty glance at the situation. “We are cotched as fairly as ever was a mouse in a trap, and it now remains for us to peg away, and go under doing the best we can. Have ye your pistol?”
“Yes; I picked it up again, after throwing it in the face of the grizzly, but it isn’t loaded.”
“Then it ain’t of much account, as me mither used to say in her affectionate references to me father; but if one of the spalpeens happen to come onto ye too suddent like, ye might scare him by shoving that into his eyes. I’ve got the powder for the same, but the bullets won’t fit it, so I’ll have to do the shooting.”