The December sun was high and warm, flooding the broad rock-strewn terrace half-way between river and sky, but the battle was still going on. Now that the Yavapais had found out they could not break to freedom, the second soldier line had been advanced, with a dash, to join the first. As fast as it could be loaded and fired, every gun was speeding bullet after bullet into the cave, filling it with a very hailstorm of glancing, crisscrossing lead.
The cave was broad, and seemed to be shallow; and how anybody in there could be alive was a mystery. But alive some of those Apache-Mohaves were, for above the deafening staccato of a hundred carbines rose the death chant and the shrieks and wails and groans and curses.
There was no token of surrender. It was a fight to the death. Cleverly shielded in a niche at his end of the rampart the medicine-man, barely seen through the smoke and dust, was shooting as before, helped by the squaws who handed up guns to him; he certainly wore a charmed shirt. Now and again a warrior bobbed up, fired blindly, and bobbed down.
Micky had long ago used the last of his cartridges. Like Jimmie, he might only lie and watch.
“I told you there would be a good fight!” he shouted, in Jimmie’s ear. “This is the end of these Delt-che people. They fight like wolves in a pen, but it is no use.”
“Look!” shouted back Jimmie, pointing.
An Apache-Mohave boy—he was naked and chubby and could not have been more than three or four years old—had run out, around the cave wall, into the open space in front; and there he stood, sucking his thumb, and scowling at the Americanos as if he wanted the noise stopped. Over he keeled, struck by a chance bullet (for nobody would have shot at him); but he was not dead—he lay and kicked and howled, and all the firing ceased as if by magic.
From the soldiers’ line somebody darted forward. [Hurrah!]
[It was Nan-ta-je.] He reached the little boy, grabbed him and at one jump was behind a rock again.