“Not the best place in the world to stand off ten men,” he gave his opinion. “We ought to get our backs up against something that can’t be surrounded.”
Quelele read the white man’s thoughts, for he pointed farther up the cañon beyond the lava cistern. There the gorge narrowed to a veritable doorway and the steps thereto were so precipitous that one ascending would have to scramble and claw a way on hands and knees; no possible chance for a rush en masse. Bim surveyed the natural citadel with the eye of a trained Border man who occasionally has to reckon with such elementals as the killing power of a rifle bullet and the protective quality of a ’dobe wall. Finally he screwed one eye at the crack of sky showing between the escarpments and shook his head dubiously at what he saw there. Quelele, who had had the superior advantage of a wider view from his aerie on the cliff top, bowed his arms in the shape of a ball and waved a hand to the west.
“Papago says it’s a big storm brewing over yonder,” Bim explained. “When these thunderheads finally get all boiled into one and come a-runnin’ it’s a case of take to cover. If this thing is the regulation rim-fire sock-dollager they’s goin’ be a sight of water pass over where we’re standin’ before long. Me, I’d rather be somewhere else than in this dry channel.”
Grant did not linger to discuss strategy longer. He went to where Benicia was sleeping in the shade of a boulder and gently touched her on the shoulder. The girl sat up, startled.
“We have to be moving,” Grant told her. “Quelele has just reported Urgo and his rurales out on the desert and coming our way.”
“And El Doctor?” she quickly interposed. “He has returned from the cave?”
Grant shook his head. Bitter disappointment flashed into her eyes at the realization of how fate had played to interpose the grim business of a fight just on the minute of realization of her great hopes. Grant, stooping beside her and watching the play of emotions on her features, saw quick remorse chase away the frown. Impulsively a brown hand reached out to play upon the back of his.
“Grant, beloved”—how like the overtones from her own golden harp the contralto richness of her voice!—“I am desperately selfish and you will not understand.—Thinking only of my own purpose—bringing you with your wound still unhealed out to this place to face—death perhaps.—And you do this for me—”
“’Nicia, little girl—” He could go no farther than those words, for the song in his heart was overwhelming. At last—at last the trammels of the girl’s heart were shaken off and the call he’d waited for so long had come! Call of the heart of her to his.
She was on her feet, vibrant with energy, alive to the exigencies of impending action. Bim was saddling the horses and Quelele had the pack on the mule when they joined them. Bim briefly explained to the girl his survey of the gorge for strategical strength; at any cost they must move up until they could find some sheep trail or other practicable ledge giving escape from the flood water channel. “If that doddering old medicine man would only quit his sing-song business and come back for a rifle we’d be that much better off,” the big fellow grumbled.