om Indians on that side. On looking up
it appeared to me to be perfectly precipitous, a few shrubs, however,
projected here and there from the crevices of the rock, but they would
not, I fancied, enable the most active savage to climb up, though by
dropping from one to the other, a person might reach the bottom without
breaking his neck. We examined the cliffs for some distance to the
northward, of our camp. They retained the same character all the way.

"No savages can get up there, at all events," I observed, as we were
returning.

"Not quite so sure of that," answered Mr Tidey. "We will not trust
entirely to them. I will advise your father to post a sentinel on that
side as well as the others." We hurried back, and were in time to
assist in leading the horses and cattle down to the river. It would
have been a fine opportunity for any lurking foes to have carried them
off; probably, however, no Indians were in the neighbourhood, or if they
were, they were deterred from approaching by seeing our rifles in our
hands ready for action. My father was fully alive to the importance of
guarding the two sides formed by the gully and the cliff, and he ordered
all hands not required to keep guard on the outside of the camp, to
employ their axes in cutting down enough timber for forming a
breastwork,--by so doing we should, he remarked, lay bare the side of
the gully and deprive our assailants of the protection the brushwood
might afford them.

"If we are only to spend one night here, I wonder father thinks it
necessary to take so much trouble," observed Dan.

"If the trouble is not taken, it might prove our last night, my boy,"
answered the Dominie, who overheard him: "if we cannot manage to keep
the Indians out of the camp, we may find our scalps off our heads before
the morning."

Two or three of the men, who were somewhat discontented with the last
few days' hard travelling and short commons, though they had hitherto
gone on without grumbling, began to express themselves much as Dan had
done. Dio, who had been engaged in arranging the camp, and who had just
come up axe in hand, overheard them.

"What you say, you boys?" he exclaimed; "dis niggar show you how to chop
de trees," and, raising his axe, he began to strike away with a vigour
which quickly cut through half a stout trunk. "Dare, dat de way dey
chop in Kentucky!" he again exclaimed, as the tree came down with a
crash. Tree after tree quickly fell ben