As I found myself once more upon my feet, it was a tolerably difficult matter for me to realize that I was still living.
While engaged in attempting to do so, the whole landscape seemed to quiver vaguely under my fading eyes. Its lines and colors fairly danced before me. I felt that I was falling, and everything around settled into a dense blackness.
I knew no more.
On, after some time, recovering my senses, I found that I was lying by the side of the Indian, literally drenched with the blood flowing from his wounds. Sitting up, after a few minutes, I was enabled to recall my lagging senses and realize the struggle I had gone through. Yes! there it lay, stark and motionless in the shadow thrown across it from the rocky side of the cañon, by the sun which was now far beneath it. As for the corpse beside me, it was stabbed and hacked in a frightful manner. But for the fearful strife I had been engaged in with it, when living, and the danger I had, as it seemed to me, so unaccountably escaped, I should positively have sickened at the sight. The memory of this strung my nerves once more to endurance, although my garments were dripping with its blood, and absolutely soaked through with my own sweat.
Staggering to my feet, I re-collected my senses, which had, for a short space, again wandered. Then, with some difficulty, I again ascended the rough hill, until I reached the space on which the first Indian, I had made an end of, was lying. His teeth were forced together—his eyes staring unconsciously up to the blue sky. My knife was at some distance from the spot. The rifle was close to him. Its barrel was bent and its stock broken with the heavy blow I had received.
Let me squarely own that never, either before or since, have I raised the hair of any Indian, with a more secure feeling of angry joy than I felt in taking those two scalps.
I had now to return.
The position of the sun, low beneath the western summit of the cañon, testified to the fact that some two hours must have elapsed since the two Pah-utes had leapt upon me.
Slowly, and with great difficulty, I commenced my way towards the camp. While looking on the scene of my danger, I had been kept up by the remains of the excitement I had experienced. I had felt no pain, and been unconscious of fatigue. Now, my dead enemies lay unconsciously on the earth. The exhaustion consequent on my fierce struggle for life, and the suffering from the blow upon my shoulder, became apparent to me. Scarcely, was I able to walk. Frequently was I obliged to lean on a jutting boulder of rock, or steady myself for a minute or two against the trunk of a tree, before I could again persistently renew my progress. Not yet had I reached the mouth of the cañon, when some of the boys met me.
It seemed that Butch' and Brighton Bill had long since returned, and, although scarcely alarmed, had grown in some slight degree uneasy at my not putting in an appearance. Consequently, with some of the others, they had come out to seek for me.