by our
clattering pace, slipped past us back down the gorge. When at last we
reached the end of the narrows and the canon broadened to a width of
several hundred yards, all but fifty or seventy-five yards of the belt
of timber lining the stream along the south wall being comparatively
level grassy bunch land, nearly devoid of cover, we congratulated
ourselves that we had not been scared into a retreat.

Keen to put as much distance as we could between us and the Lipans, we
travelled on up the canon at a sharp trot, keeping well to its middle,
until about 5 p.m., when we reached a point where it widened into a
broad bay, nearly seven hundred yards from crest to crest, with a dense
thicket of mesquite trees near its centre that made fine shelter and an
excellent point of defence for a night camp. The stream hugged the
east wall of the canon, where it had carved out a tortuous bed perhaps
one hundred and fifty yards wide, and so deep below the bench we
occupied that only the tops of tall cottonwoods were visible from the
thicket.

While the rest of us were busy unsaddling and unpacking, Thornton slung
all our canteens over his shoulder, and started for the stream. But no
sooner had he disappeared below the edge of the bench, a scant two
hundred yards from our camp, before a rapid rifle fire opened which,
while we knew it must proceed from his direction, echoed back from one
cliff wall to the other until it appeared like an attack on our
position from all sides, while the echoes multiplied to the volume of
cannon fire at the sound of each shot. Indeed, never have I heard such
thunderous, crashing, ear-splitting gun-detonations except on one other
occasion, when aboard the British battle ship _Invincible_ and in her
six-inch gun battery while a salute was being fired.

Frightened by the fire, one of our pack horses stampeded down the
canon. Sending Manuel in pursuit, and leaving Tomas at the camp,
Crawford, Cress, and I ran for the break of benchland, to reach and aid
Thornton. Nearing it, all three dropped flat, and crawled to its edge,
just in time to see George make a neat snap shot at a Lipan midway of a
flying leap over a log, and drop him dead. Old George was standing
quietly on the lower slope of the bench just above the timber, while
the shots from eight or ten Lipan rifles were raining all about him!
The Lipans lay in the timber only one hundred to one hundred and fifty
yards away, and it was a miracle the