ted him or thought of it.

Three mules which could not rise were left where they lay, feebly
struggling to regain their feet and follow their comrades, but falling
back with hollow groanings and a kind of human despair in their faces.
Mile after mile the retreat continued, always at a walk, but without
halting. It was long before the Apaches were seen again, for the ascent of
the plateau lost them a considerable space, and after that they were
hidden for a time by its undulations. But about four in the afternoon,
while the emigrants were still at least five miles from the river, a group
of savage horsemen rose on a knoll not more than three miles behind, and
uttered a yell of triumph. There was a brief panic, and another attempt to
push the animals, which Thurstane checked with levelled pistol.

The train had already entered a gully. As this gully advanced it rapidly
broadened and deepened into a canon. It was the track of an extinct river
which had once flowed into the San Juan on its way to the distant Pacific.
Its windings hid the desired goal; the fugitives must plunge into it
blindfold; whatever fate it brought them, they must accept it. They were
like men who should enter the cavern of unknown goblins to escape from
demons who were following visibly on their footsteps.

From time to time they heard ferocious yells in their rear, and beheld
their fiendish pursuers, now also in the canon. It was like Christian
tracking the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and listening to the screams
and curses of devils. At every reappearance of the Apaches they had
diminished the distance between themselves and their expected prey, and at
last they were evidently not more than a mile behind. But there in sight
was the river; there, enclosed in one of its bends, was an alluvial plain;
rising from the extreme verge of the plain, and overhanging the stream,
was a bluff; and on this bluff was what seemed to be a fortress.

Thurstane sent all the horsemen to the rear of the train, took post
himself as the rearmost man, measured once more with his eye the space
between his charge and the enemy, cast an anxious glance at the reeling
beast which bore Clara, and in a firm ringing voice commanded a trot.

The order and the movement which followed it were answered by the Indians
with a yell. The monstrous and precipitous walls of the canon clamored
back a fiendish mockery of echoes which seemed to call for the prowlers of
the air to arrive