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. Just before the coming of dawn, Hampton, without
uttering a word, calmly turned up the collar of his tightly buttoned
coat, so as better to conceal the white collar he wore, gripped his
revolver between his teeth, and crept like some wriggling snake among
the black rocks and through the dense underbrush in search after water.
By some miracle of divine mercy he was permitted to pass unscathed, and
came crawling back, a dozen hastily filled canteens dangling across his
shoulders. It was like nectar to those parched, feverish throats; but
of food barely a mouthful apiece remained in the haversacks.

The second day dragged onward, its hours bringing no change for the
better, no relief, no slightest ray of hope. The hot sun scorched them
pitilessly, and two of the wounded died delirious. From dawn to dark
there came no slackening of the savage watchfulness which held the
survivors helpless behind their coverts. The merest uplifting of a
head, the slightest movement of a hand, was sufficient to demonstrate