Major Brown’s trumpeter orderly sounded: “Commence firing.” The high strains lilted gaily from canyon wall to canyon wall, and back again.
“Take it easy, boys,” cautioned Sergeant Turpin, near the Jimmy squad. “Let the front line do the work, but if you see a head, hit it. But watch out for the women and children.”
The Yavapai warriors, behind their high rock rampart, taller than they were, had difficulty in seeing out. Occasionally a head seemed to be cautiously poked up, under an old hat, and the men of the front rank promptly banged away at it.
Micky, squirming for a rest, leveled his battered rifle across the top of the boulder, took aim with his one eye—“Bang!” Instantly an answering shot so shrewdly scraped the boulder top that the stinging rock splinters filled not only Micky’s one eye but both eyes of the intently peering Jimmie.
“Fool Red-head, you; why you shoot?” scolded Big Mouth. “Squaw hold up hat on stick, you shoot at that, man shoot at you!”
This trick did not deceive the soldiers long. The Yavapais quit it, and from behind their wall began to send arrows by scores high into the air, so that, curving downward, they might land among the rocks where the soldiers and scouts lay.
Major Brown met this with a similar scheme. Nan-ta-je and Archie MacIntosh wriggled forward, as rapidly as snakes, among the rocks, from back line to front line, taking a message to soldiers and scouts. The word was passed, for suddenly all the line elevated the carbines and rifles a little higher and shot fast.
Long Jim Cook and Alchisé and Lieutenant Ross and the others in sight were grabbing the cartridges spread by the handful beside them, and using them as rapidly as triggers might be pulled. From the whole wide cave floated dust; here and there the edges melted away.
“Hi! That’s the stuff!” muttered Joe. “Shoot into the cave an’ let the bullets glance. That’ll fetch ’em.”
Now squaws and children were crying with pain and fright. The glancing, re-bounding bullets favored nobody. The warriors howled furiously. The lead was finding them, behind their wall. Worse, it was wounding their wives and babies. So they stood up, to face it and try to divert it—stop it, if possible.