The mouth broke into the wall of the cañon some fifteen feet above the cañon’s bed, and a slope, formed of ancient washings from the gully, led upward to the entrance of it.
It was narrow, filled with a growth of scrub, and its bed sloped upward from the point where it entered the cañon.
Besides, it was a blind gully, running into the hills for a few hundred feet and terminating in a sheer wall. All the other walls were equally steep and unscalable. There was no getting into the gully in any way except from the cañon.
Little Cayuse took due account of all these advantages, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. The horses he tethered among the bushes, and then returned to the gully’s mouth, and sat down to watch and wait.
Hours passed, and the boy, through all that time, sat like a bronze statue, wonderfully alert, but neither hearing nor seeing anything that claimed his attention. Perhaps he would not have been so calm and passive could he have known what was taking place in the depths of the Forty Thieves!
The sun went down, daylight faded out of the west, and one by one the stars stole over the sky. Cayuse watched them as they brightened overhead.
At last he began wondering about Dell. She had been a long time on watch at the shaft, and it had been agreed between them that she should come to the gully, in three hours, and look out for the horses while Cayuse watched the shaft. More than three hours had passed, and Dell had not come.
The boy stepped out into the cañon and cast his eyes in the direction of the mine. The defile was plunged in gloom, and Cayuse could see nothing.
He threw back his head and gave the bark of a timber-wolf. No answer came. He tried again, but still without securing a response.
It was a signal well known among the scout’s pards, and if Dell had heard it she would surely have signified that she had by a similar answer.