Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/221

 good luck broke no necks. As we turned a sudden angle in the wall, we saw the condition of affairs most completely. The precipice forming that side of the cañon was hundreds of feet in height, but at a point some four or five hundred feet below the crest had fallen back in a shelf upon which was a cave of no great depth. In front of the cave great blocks of stone furnished a natural rampart behind which the garrison could bid defiance to the assaults of almost any enemy; in this eyrie, the band of "Nanni-chaddi" felt a security such as only the eagle or the vulture can feel in the seclusion of the ice-covered dizzy pinnacles of the Andes; from the shelf upon which they lived these savages, who seem to me to have been the last of the cliff-dwellers within our borders, had on several occasions watched the commands of Sanford and Carr struggling to make their way up the stream in the cañon below. The existence of one, or perhaps two, rancherias somewhere within this gloomy cañon had long been suspected, but never demonstrated until the present moment. When we joined Ross we heard his story told in few words: he and his small band of twelve had followed Felmer and Macintosh down the face of the cliff until they had reached the small open space in front of the cave; there they saw within a very few yards of them the party of raiders just returned from the Gila settlements, who had left at pasture the band of fifteen ponies which we had seen. These warriors were dancing, either to keep themselves warm or as a portion of some religious ceremonial, as is generally the case with the tribes in the southwest. Close by them crouched half a dozen squaws, aroused from slumber to prepare food for the hungry braves. The flames of the fire, small as it was, reflected back from the high walls, gave a weird illumination to the features of the circle, and enabled the whites to take better aim upon their unsuspecting victims. Ross and "Nantaje" consulted in whispers, and immediately it was decided that each man should with the least noise possible cock his piece and aim at one of the group without reference to what his next-door neighbor might be doing. Had not the Apaches been interested in their own singing, they might surely have heard the low whisper: ready! aim! fire! but it would have been too late; the die was cast, and their hour had come.

The fearful noise which we had heard, reverberating from peak to peak and from crag to crag, was the volley poured in by Ross