So I lay there a while listening.

By and by the star was blotted out, and I cut loose, and old Meat-in-the-pot missed fire--she never did it before nor since; I think that cartridge-- Well, I don't know where the Injins came from, but it seemed as if the hammer had hardly clicked before three or four of them bad piled on me.
I put up the best fight I could, for I wasn't figuring to be caught alive, and this miss-fire deal had fooled me all along the line.

They surely had a lively time.

I expected every minute to feel a knife in my back, but when I didn't get it then I knew they wanted to bring me in alive, and that made me fight harder.

First and last, we rolled and plunged all the way from the rim-rock down to the canon-bed.