"Darn the stinkin' cowarts!" cried the guide, grasping the gun, and facing towards the plain.

"I don't know how it may all eend, but this'll keep 'em off a while, anyhow." As he spoke he threw himself behind the body of the slaughtered steed, which, sustained in an upright position between the counterpart walls, formed a safe barricade against the bullets and arrows of the Indians.
These, now riding straight towards the spot, made the rocks resound with exclamations of surprise--shouts that spoke of a delayed, perhaps defeated, vengeance.
They took care, however, not to come within range of that long steel-grey tube, that, turning like a telescope on its pivot, commanded a semicircle of at least a hundred yards' radius round the opening in the cliff.
Despite all the earnestness of their vengeful anger, the pursuers were now fairly at bay, and for a time could be kept so.
Hamersley looked upon it as being but a respite--a mere temporary deliverance from danger, yet to terminate in death.

True, they had got into a position where, to all appearance, they could defend themselves as long as their ammunition lasted, or as they could withstand the agony of thirst or the cravings of hunger.

How were they to get out again?
As well might they have been besieged in a cave, with no chance of sortie or escape.
These thoughts he communicated to his companion, as soon as they found time to talk.
"Hunger an' thirst ain't nothin' to do wi' it," was Wilder response.
"We ain't a goin' to stay hyar not twenty minutes, if this child kin manage it as he intends ter do.

You don't s'pose I rushed into this hyar hole like a chased rabbit?
No, Frank; I've heern o' this place afore, from some fellers thet, like ourselves, made _cache_ in it from a band o' pursuin' Kimanch.