or a farther advance, and clambering back into
the crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and were
presently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. This
extension of the subterranean waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wide
and high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined by tossing
pebbles against the arching roof. None the less, 'twas full of crooks
and windings; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were like
to lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching side
passages, Richard stopped me with a hand thrust back.

"Softly!" he cautioned; "here are their vedettes!"

Just beyond the crooking elbow the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone
to coals showed us two Indian sentries set to keep the pass. Dick drew
his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the
great blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he would mutter, as the
teeth-chattering suffered him:

"What say you, Jack? Shall we rush them? There's naught else for it."
And then, with a gritting oath: "Oh, damn this cursed chilling!"

I whispered back that we would wait till he was better fit. He was loath
to admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary delay saved
our lives in that strait. While we paused, hugging the shadows in the
crooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenly
starred with flaring flambeaux lighting the way for a hasting rabble of
savages; and had we been entangled in the struggle with the two
sentinels we should have been taken red-handed.

As it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. In the
same breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind in
which we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged, reckless
of possible pitfalls. We were no more than safely out of the main
corridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, trooped
past our covert in full cry, leaving us half smothered in the smoky
trail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.

"Now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so
suddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak
without coughing to betray ourselves.

"Our pony-riding Tuckaseges, doubtless," was Richard's ready answer. "By
all the chances, they should have met the Great Bear and his
peace-offering out yonder on the trace--which same they did not. So
when they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitch