The situation called for something more than cheers, however, and the miners hurried to the mouth of the notch. To pack it breast-high with fragments of wood and stone was no great matter, and the breastwork was finished in time for a late supper.
"Tell ye what, jedge," remarked one of the men, "if I was a redskin I wouldn't be in a hurry to ride up to that there bar, with a half a dozen rifles peepin' over it. Reckon it'd take the cleanest kind of grit. A feller could stand behind it and pepper away, and be a'most safe agin anything short of cannon."
The wagons and other things were left as they were, and the entire notch was a perfectly safe corral for the animals. All the human beings moved their bivouac down towards the barrier they had made, leaving the fires behind them.
"They're all right, there," said Pine, "and we needn't kindle any down hereaway to tell jest where we are."
There was sense in that, and one sentry was as good as a dozen to keep watch at the narrow entrance left, for even that was securely closed until there should be a good reason for opening it.
Sile found himself the hero of the camp, and that the scratch upon his arm excused him from guard duty. At first he was well pleased to lie down and go to sleep, after the severe fatigue and excitement of his great ride. Never before had he raced it after such a fashion, and every bone and muscle felt the effects of the long strain. He saw, too, that everybody else was taking the matter with perfect coolness. All those miners had been in tight places more than once, and they had great faith in the prudence of redskins about charging upon white riflemen hidden behind rocks. Sile ate a hearty supper. In fact, he was compelled at last to be very positive with Ha-ha-pah-no. She would have gone right on cooking for him until morning if he had let her, and so would Na-tee-kah. They were positively proud of the privilege of bringing him his coffee. He was assured that the horse and weapons of the Apache warrior were his own personal property, and he examined them again and again with a sense of ownership that he had never felt for anything else. He could not tell why, until Jonas remarked to him,
"If you hadn't pulled straight, your plunder'd be in the 'Pache camp 'bout now, scalp and all. It was jest a question of grit and shootin'. I'm powerful glad you made out to throw yer lead to the right spot."
So was Sile, but it was not easy, somehow, for him to make up his mind that he had really killed anybody. He found a queer idea in his mind several times that before long that Apache warrior would wake up and wonder what had become of his horse and his weapons. Not long after supper he curled up in his blanket at the foot of a tree, and in a few minutes he was soundly asleep. He did not hear his father say to Yellow Pine, as the two bent over him,
"My brave boy!"
Nor did he hear Pine grumble,