Listen, again! Amidst the cries of the enraged Yavapais there rose the clink of carbine butt and shuffle of moccasins from marching men, again. Major Brown was bringing down the rest of the troops. But Micky had focussed his attention upon something else. The roving one eye of his never missed a single point.
“Yavapai!” he uttered excitedly, half rising and pointing, and up he jerked his rifle.
“Hooh!” exclaimed Big Mouth, craning.
John Cahill was the quickest. Away beyond, down the beetling canyon wall, on an out-jutting rock there, stood a naked Indian with long black hair. He whooped triumphantly. He had escaped, somehow, from the cave—he was almost to the bottom and in a moment more——
“Bang!”
Blacksmith Cahill’s carbine had spoken even while Big Mouth and Joe and Micky were taking aim.
“Thut!” That was the bullet striking flesh. Off from the rock was swept the Indian, and disappeared. Whether or not he had been killed, nobody knew; but his body was found later, by some squaws.
“He will take no word to other Yavapai, I think,” pronounced Micky. “If other Yavapai come and catch us here, then we are dead, too.”
The Major Brown soldiers were pelting in, breathless from the slippery trail. Hither-thither they deployed, sneaking among the rocks and darting across the face of the cave-mouth wall. Now a Pima of the Bourke men stood up, daring the Yavapais while he peered for a shot into the cave. A puff of smoke belched from a niche atop the rampart—“Bang!”—and down he wilted, into a crumpled heap without motion.
The Yavapais yelled louder—their “kill” yell. The Pimas and White Mountains yelled back. The soldiers were not doing much shooting, yet. Their officers were arranging them. Very soon the arrangement had settled into this: