Chapter Forty Two.
How to Turn Round.
There was another puff of smoke, and another, followed by their cracks and echoes; a few moments’ pause, and two more, with the result that every Indian on the ledge disappeared, two of them falling prone, to lie motionless, the others to hurry to where their companions held the reins that had been passed to them.
Chris saw nothing of this, but at every report coming from down in the depression his heart leaped, knowing as he did that the sharp cracks were the reports of rifles, and that these could only be fired by his friends.
From clinging there half stunned and perfectly inert, he felt a thrill of energy begin to move within him—a thrill which became a spasm as all at once he saw something moving that looked like an animal crawling over the edge of the cliff about fifty feet diagonally away from where he lay.
As the object passed from behind some intervening trees he could see plainly enough that it was an Indian grasping a bow, and the top of his quiver could be seen above his shoulder.
Chris was alert now, and grasped the fact that this was another of the enemy making his way down to a big patch of pensile growth which would afford him cover, from whence he could direct his arrows either at his
watcher or at those who had fired upward from the valley.
“Could I?” he asked himself, with the desire for life once more throbbing strongly in his veins.