Kent, and Berry Davis.'
'Same old crowd,' said the humorist of our party.
He was an Eastern man, unfamiliar with the decent
observances of social intercourse. A gesture of dis-
approval from our leader silenced him, and the
stranger proceeded with his tale:
'The savages dismounted also, and some of them
ran up the gulch beyond the point at which we had
left it, cutting off further retreat in that direction and
forcing us on up the side. Unfortunately the chapar-
ral extended only a short distance up the slope, and
as we came into the open ground above we took
the fire of a dozen rifles; but Apaches shoot badly
when in a hurry, and God so willed it that none of us
fell. Twenty yards up the slope, beyond the edge
of the brush, were vertical cliffs, in which, directly
in front of us, was a narrow opening. Into that we
ran, finding ourselves in a cavern about as large
as an ordinary room in a house. Here for a time we
were safe: a single man with a repeating rifle could
defend the entrance against all the Apaches in
the land. But against hunger and thirst we had
no defence. Courage we still had, but hope was a
memory.
'Not one of those Indians did we afterward see,
but by the smoke and glare of their fires in the gulch
we knew that by day and by night they watched
with ready rifles in the edge of the bush--knew that
if we made a sortie not a man of us would live to
take three steps into the open.
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