ALMOST INSTANTLY LAWSON FIRED UPWARD AT RANDOM.
So it chanced that when Lawson—who, as we have seen, had not been trained in the schools—was constructing his corner tower, he had cut loopholes close to the eastern and southern walls, through which those fronts might be raked along their entire length, but it had not occurred to him that, by omitting the loopholes in the outer circumference of his tower, he left a large dead angle against which an assault could be brought which the garrison would be utterly powerless to hinder or obstruct.
The Indians, after their second rebuff, seemed to have again gone into silent committee of the whole, and were now brewing another scheme of assault which should take into account the white man's new engine of destruction. The sun was beginning to cast slanting shadows from the west, but the heat and glare showed no sign of relenting, and the close corner tower glowed like a living furnace. As the Indians seemed to have given up all thought of an assault by the entrance, gate, the partners determined to abandon the general defence of the interior, and restrict their endeavors to the flanking tower. And so, panting with heat and tortured by thirst, the defenders stood at their posts, each watching from his loophole the angle of ground outside the walls that fell within the limits of his narrow view, and waited, stoically, for what the afternoon was to bring in the way of unwelcome or dangerous surprise. As we are about to see, the outcome of their waiting was not to be long delayed.
The declining shadows marked about the hour of four as Lawson drew back suddenly from his loophole and cast a searching glance upward at the low-hanging roof. In a moment a suspicious noise which had caught his ear was renewed. It was the grating sound again, as of crackling adobe, but nearer; and there could be no mistaking its ominous meaning. Suddenly Green touched his partner, and pointed up to the thatch, where a few fragments of adobe, dislodged by the jar outside, were falling over their very heads, showing that the enemy were at work in the dead angle where there were no loopholes. The Indians had discovered the weak point in their scheme of flank defence, and the garrison was now absolutely at their mercy. The exact purpose of the enemy was not yet quite plain. If it were another endeavor to burn the roof, there was still a shadow of hope. If the Indians were going to attempt to breach the walls, or, worse, moisten them with water from the creek and saw them down with a horsehair lariat, then the end was indeed near. Meantime the noise increased; there was a scraping of feet on the dry thatch on the top of the wall, then a shot, and Green, with a bullet through his brain, fell dead at his comrade's feet. Almost instantly Lawson fired upward at random, and a heavy thud on the ground outside evidenced the success of his endeavor to avenge his comrade, and the temporary failure of the enemy's new plan of assault.
HE NO LONGER HOPED NOR FEARED.
Alone with his dead, Lawson now stoically awaited the end. The Indians were maddened at their losses; darkness was still some hours away, and death by torture or, at the last extremity, by his own hand seemed to the exhausted survivor a question of but a few moments' time. Having solved the mystery of the dead angle, a dozen warriors could now climb the tower, or if their next attempt were as original in its conception as the last, a single Apache, from the top of the pole, could hold his rifle over the roof and riddle the interior with perfect safety. To add to his peril, the afternoon breeze from the north had sprung up, and the gate was beginning to swing slowly back and forth; the least stiffening, and the gate would be blown open and the whole interior exposed to view.
Still the silence continued, and Lawson stood by his dead partner and mechanically turned the cylinder of his revolver as he speculated idly whether the last cartridge, which he had reserved for himself, would miss fire when the awful emergency came. They had missed so often—for it was in the early days of metallic ammunition, and pistol cartridges were notoriously unreliable. If it did fail, they would give him no chance to try again. He no longer hoped nor feared; his past was an eventless, uninteresting blank, which he had neither will nor power to recall. Dazed at the happenings of the day, his busy brain ceased to plan; he leaned on his rifle and strove to breathe in the stifling atmosphere, and waited for what the next instant was to bring. How long this continued he could never tell. He could only remember how his heart started to beat as he heard, through the northern loophole, the faint tinkling of a distant bell. Could it be so? Again he strained his ear to listen, and again came the harsh tinkling. There could be no doubt of it; it was relief at last, unexpected and unhoped-for, and seemed to have come to him from the blazing skies. A train of freight-wagons, heavily manned, which he had supposed to be still on the Yuma desert, had left Tucson at dawn of day, and was now slowly making its way through the swamp, intending to make camp at the Cienega ere the sun went down. The Indians had accurately measured its strength, and recognizing their utter inability to cope with twenty well armed teamsters, had decamped as quietly and silently as they had come, and the siege was over.