“Superstition or not,” the other replied, “it represented the instinct to go out alone, and meditate on solemn things. Didn’t it, Joe?”
“Yes, sir!” Joe answered, his own heart full of enthusiasm for this picture of the lone, naked Indian on top of the watch-tower of the prairies.
But Tom and Robert Crimmins, who had less imagination, had wandered away to an edge of the cliff, to toss stones over into the depths below, and suddenly the rest heard them shouting, and ran to the edge.
One of the stones they had thrown over had landed on a ledge some seventy-five feet below, and scared off a golden eagle, which was now sailing away from the cliff face with tremendous beats of his huge wings, each beat taking him up, it seemed, fifty feet, till soon he was soaring in circles out over the prairie, and sweeping back, with wings at rest, far overhead, evidently alarmed but intent on finding out what had disturbed him.
Crawling to the edge, and looking over, the party could see a big nest on the ledge below, with white things in it, and beside it, like bones.
“I’m going to have a photograph of that!” Tom cried. “Gee, I wish there were some little eagles in it!”
“You might be sorry if there were,” Mills answered briefly, as Tom fastened the rope under his arms. “I’m not even sure of the bird now the young are out. Here, take my revolver, and if it comes at you, let him have it.”
Tom put his camera in one pocket, the automatic in the other, and the men above lowered him over the edge, where he swung almost free, and had to kick the cliffside with his feet to keep himself from spinning and keep his face outward. The eagle still circled above, now and then swooping nearer till they could hear the wing beats, but it was evidently afraid to attack. Tom finally reached the ledge, landing, in fact, with both feet in the nest. It was a huge affair of sticks, lined with dry prairie grass, almost as high as his shoulders, and four feet across. He climbed out, watching the eagle with one eye, and took a couple of snapshots of it, then picked up some of the bones and examined them, grasped the rope just above his face, to ease the strain under his arms, and gave the signal to those above.
As he began to rise from the nest, the eagle swooped ever nearer, now lower than the men on the summit, so they could see its vast wing spread, its brown back and rusty colored head and neck.
Tom let go of the rope with his hands, and got the pistol out of his pocket. To tell the truth, he was beginning to get uncomfortable. As the eagle swooped within fifty feet of him, and he could see its glinting eyes, he lifted the gun and fired. Naturally, you cannot shoot a rapidly moving object with a pistol, while you yourself are dangling and spinning on the end of a rope, with any great precision of aim. He did not hit the bird, but he frightened it. With an incredibly quick change of tack, it tilted up on one wing, soared outward and upward, two hundred feet overhead, and far out from the cliff. The men hauled Tom back over the edge.