ollision with danger.
Probably Rushing River thought it so, for next moment he raised his
black head quickly. Finding a hole in the defences, he applied one of
his black eyes to it and peeped through. Seeing nothing, he uttered
another whoop, and vaulted over like a squirrel, tomahawk in hand, ready
to brain anybody or anything. Seeing nobody and nothing in particular,
except an open door, he suspected an ambush in that quarter, darted
round the corner of the hut to get out of the doorway line of fire, and
peeped back.

Animated by a similar spirit, his men followed suit. When it became
evident that no one meant to come out of the hut Rushing River resolved
to go in, and did so with another yell and a flourish of his deadly
weapon, but again was he doomed to expend his courage and violence on
air, for he possessed too much of natural dignity to expend his wrath on
inanimate furniture.

Of course one glance sufficed to show that the defenders had flown, and
it needed not the practised wit of a savage to perceive that they had
retreated through the back door. In his eagerness to catch the foe, the
Indian chief sprang after them with such a rush that nothing but a stout
willow, which he grasped convulsively, prevented him from going over the
precipice headlong--changing, as it were, from a River into a Fall--and
ending his career appropriately in the torrent below.

When the chief had assembled his followers on the limited surface of the
ledge, they all gazed around them for a few seconds in silence. On one
side was a sheer precipice. On another side was, if we may so express
it, a sheerer precipice rising upward. On the third side was the steep
and rugged path, which looked sufficiently dangerous to arrest all save
the mad or the desperate. On the fourth side was the hut.

Seeing all this at a glance, Rushing River looked mysterious and said,
"Ho!"

To which his men returned, "How!" "Hi!" and "Hee!" or some other
exclamation indicative of bafflement and surprise.

Standing on the trap-door rock as on a sort of pulpit, the chief pointed
with his finger to the precipitous path, and said solemnly--

"Big Tim has gone down _there_. He has net the wings of the hawk, but
he has the spirit of the squirrel, or the legs of the goat."

"Or the brains of the fool," suggested a follower, with a few drops of
white blood in his veins, which made him what boys call "cheeky."

"Of course," continued Rushing River, st