“Look, Joses, the Beaver’s got a monster. He has let it go. What’s he bounding ashore for like that?”
“Quick, Master Bart—danger!” cried Joses, excitedly, as a warning cry rang along the river. “Look out! This way!”
“What’s the danger?” cried Bart, leaping ashore and un-slinging his rifle.
“Injun, my lad; don’t you see ’em? they’re coming down the canyon. This way. Never mind the fish; make straight for the chimney. We can hold that again ’em anyhow.”
Crack—crack! went a couple of rifles from some distance up the river, and the bullets cut the boughs of the trees above their heads.
Bart’s immediate idea was to sink down amongst the herbage for cover and return the shot, but the Beaver made a rush at him, shouting, “No, no, no!” and taking his place, began to return the fire of the approaching Indians, bidding Bart escape.
“I don’t like leaving all that fish after all, Master Bart,” said Joses; “they’d be so uncommon good up yonder. Go it, you skunks! fire away, and waste your powder! Yah! What bad shots your savages are! I don’t believe they could hit our mountain upstairs there! Hadn’t we better stop and drive them back, Beaver, and let the greasers carry away the fish?”
Crack—crack—crack! rattled the rifles; and as the faint puffs of smoke could be seen rising above the bushes and rocks high up the canyon, the sounds of the firing echoed to and from the rocky sides till they died away in the distance, and it seemed at last, as the firing grew a little hotter, and was replied to briskly by Joses and the Indians, that fifty or sixty people were firing on either side.
The attack was so fairly responded to that the Apachés were checked for the time, and Joses raised himself from the place he had made his rifle-pit, and called to the Mexican greasers to run and pick up the fish, while he and the Indians covered them; but though he called several times, not one responded.
“What’s come of all them chaps, Master Bart?” he cried.