“What do you think he will do if I fail to give it back to him! He made a fight for it when I picked it up.”
“No doubt, he will think it is all over with him. We may be able to use the stone advantageously,” remarked John, as he held out his hand. George passed it to him with a smile. He had not thought of that.
There was no sleep the rest of the night. The excitement was too intense. To the boys it was a period of experience they never forgot. The position was excellently chosen, although it was hurriedly done. The stream was only twenty feet away, and water was thus available whenever needed.
The savages understood this move beyond question; when the morning broke, the clear spaces up and down the stream, afforded no lurking places, and within ten feet of the end of the wagon was a tall juniper tree, the branches of which were within ten feet of the ground.
Occasionally only could a warrior be seen, skulking from one point to the next, but beyond that there was nothing to give any indication of the number they had to contend with.
Nearly the entire forenoon passed without any action on the part of the besiegers. Angel had kept closely within the enclosure, but now he spied the juniper tree, and it was not long before his native instinct to climb, got the better of him, and he bounded over the side of the fort, and gracefully swung upwardly from branch to branch.
He then proceeded to do something that the boys had never witnessed before. These animals make seats from the boughs of the trees, and construct them so deftly that in a few moments will have a most comfortable chair. In their native state this has often been noticed by travelers.
Angel started to do this as soon as he had landed at the highest point. Ralph and Tom were very much interested in him from the first and when the seat-weaving operation began, Tom cried out: “Watch Angel; what is he doing? Look at him breaking the branches and twisting them!”
Fig. 1. Angel’s Seat.