No motion could be ventured without its checking bullet, yet hour after hour the besieged held their ground, and with ever-ready rifles left more than one reckless brave dead among the rocks.

The longed-for night came dark and early at the bottom of that narrow cleft, while hardly so much as a faint star twinkled in the little slit of sky overhead.

The cunning besiegers crept closer through the enshrouding gloom, and taunted their entrapped victims with savage cries and threats of coming torture, but no warrior among them proved sufficiently bold to rush in and slay.
Why should they?
Easier, safer far, to rest secure behind their shelters, and wait in patience until the little band had fired its last shot.

Now they skulked timorously, but then they might walk upright and glut their fiendish lust for blood.
Twice during that long night volunteers sought vainly to pierce those lines of savage watchers.

A long wailing cry of agony from out the thick darkness told the fate of their first messenger, while Casey, of the "X L," crept slowly, painfully back, with an Indian bullet embedded deep in his shoulder.