For some minutes his fancy gained ground to such an extent that the boy was completely unnerved. And no wonder, for the gloom of the great gulch with its perpendicular sides towering up to a vast height, the solitary grandeur, the silence, and the oppression wrought by the tremendous nature of his task, began to be more than his young nature could bear.
For some little time he sank into a state of despair. To use his own words, in which he thought of his brain power as something mechanical that had been wound up, his head seemed as if it would not “go.”
In fact, to use a homely phrase, he was so prostrated by the thought that, in spite of his care and the stern duties of the task that he had been set to do, he had passed some side opening by which the Indians might come down and attack the unarmed camp, that he wanted “shaking up” to bring him to himself.
He had that very shaking up literally, for all at once his pony stretched out its neck, spread its legs widely, and gave itself a violent shake, one which threatened to dislodge the saddle before the beast subsided, and Chris settled himself again in his seat.
“It’s all fancy,” he said to himself; “I must have seen such a gorge or ravine if there had been one. The Indians must come along here in front. Mounted men can’t ride down precipitous slopes.”
With this thought to comfort him the boy sat watching the open part in front from his cover, perfectly satisfied that the only portions of him visible to a coming enemy were his face and hat, while to add to his protection, in case any of the Indians’ advance-guard should suddenly ride into sight, Chris dismounted, cut a few tufts of heather-like brush, and stuck them at random through the band of his soft felt covering.
“There,” he said in a satisfied way, as he replaced his hat, “that will look at a distance as if it were growing. I’ve a good mind to rub my face with mud.”
Whether he would have so disfigured himself is doubtful, but certainly he could not, for there was no mud, nothing but a little beautifully clean sand in the bottom of the rock-pool into which the falling water splashed.
So Chris sat there thinking and straining his eyes along the narrow gulch, seeing no Indians, but the bright light on the tops of the rocky sides, while the gulch itself, always gloomy, now began to darken as if it were being gradually filled up with a flood of black velvet in a liquid state.
The pony dropped its head more and more; not to browse, for the bit held him a prisoner from that, but because it was an easy position, and in the silence Chris listened to the heavy breathing of the animal and felt the action of its sides as they rose and sank.