I promised to follow the directions that my never-despairing companion had given me.
“They won’t get old Rube’s scalp yit, they won’t. He! he! he!”
I turned towards him. The man was actually laughing at this wild and strangely-timed jest. It was awful to hear him.
Several armfuls of brush were now thrown into the mouth of the cave. I saw that it was the creosote plant, the ideodondo.
It was thrown upon the still blazing torch, and soon caught, sending up a thick, black smoke. More was piled on; and the fetid vapour, impelled by some influence from without, began to reach our nostrils and lungs, causing an almost instantaneous feeling of sickness and suffocation. I could not have borne it long. I did not stay to try how long, for at that moment I heard Rube crying out—
“Now’s your time, young fellur! Out, and gi’ them fits!”
With a feeling of desperate resolve, I clutched my pistol and dashed through the smoking brushwood. I heard a wild and deafening shout. I saw a crowd of men—of fiends. I saw spears, and tomahawks, and red knives raised, and—