It scraped my shoulder.
"What tumblee?" screamed Pig-tail Bobby.
"Hold your tongue, you fool!" said Partridge. "Don't you feel, Mose has saved us from stifling."
With the fresh air, a little light, it was very little, came through the hole to us. As for me, I felt a new man. Looking around for a barrel which I had seen in the excavation when we had first visited it, with its proprietor, I set it erect under the ventilator so unexpectedly manufactured. Mounting on it, I protruded my head through the bottom of the chapparal. Day had already broken. Through the under branches of the trees I could see the still smoking timbers of the burned-down house. The rascally Pah-utes were dancing around them, in fiendish glee.
It was too great a temptation to be resisted, and I asked John to hand me my rifle.
After he had handed it to me, I passed its barrel through the bushes with great care, so as to avoid any noise which might attract the attention of the Indians.
Never, possibly, was any red devil more surprised than that Pah-ute, when he felt the leaden messenger of death crashing through his skull.
His surprise, however, was but momentary. It silenced him forever.
They handed me another rifle, and another of the red-skins fell.
Yet another, and another—until, at last, when nine of the Indians had been slain, the remainder of them fled from the scene they had so recently fancied one of complete victory.