“Look out! It is the death song! They will charge!” were warning Nan-ta-je, Bobby Do-klinny, Alchisé, and the other scouts, in Apache and Spanish; and the soldiers repeated.
“Good!” pronounced Micky, his blue eye snapping. “It will be a fight man to man. That is no fun, to shoot into a cave.”
The chant welled higher and stronger, and all the canyon echoed again. Would they never come?
The front or skirmish line had shifted to their knees, guns at shoulders—Lieutenant Ross had drawn his revolver.
“Steady, lads,” was cautioning Sergeant Turpin and his non-coms, to this rear line. “Hold your places.”
“Here they come!”
A great cheer rang, for like jacks-in-the-box the Yavapai warriors had appeared—some twenty or thirty of them—all together leaping atop their rampart—strong, muscular, bronze-skinned fighters, bristling quivers of reed arrows upon their left shoulders, strung bows in one hand, rifles in the other, their eyes gleaming blackly, their raven hair flung back, their painted faces scowling. They emptied their guns in a crashing volley, and proceeded to ply their bows while the squaws handed up fresh guns. The skirmish line of scouts and soldiers swept the wall—the smoke eddied and hung—and out from the farther end of the wall bolted a little bevy of other warriors, to break through for freedom.
Up from their rocks jumped the skirmish line, and ran to head them off. Long Jim Cook, Alchisé, Bobby Do-klinny, Nan-ta-je, Slim Shorty, Lieutenant Ross, with his revolver—they all ran, shooting and yelling.
They were too many for the Yavapais. The top of the wall had been cleaned—and back through the opening at the end hustled, pell-mell, the escaping warriors, dragging cripples, but leaving, in the open space there, half a dozen crimsoned, motionless forms.
The firing died away. The face of the cave precipice was beginning to glow with sunlight. What next, now?