ely that by no slow process, but by some sudden spasm of
nature, was it rent in the face of the range. And here in its depths,
just around one of the sharpest bends, honey-combed out of the solid
rock are half a dozen deep lateral fissures and caves where the
sunbeams never penetrate, where the air is reasonably cool and still,
where on this scorching May morning, far away from home and relatives,
two young girls are sheltered by the natural roofs and walls against
the fiery sunshine and by a little band of resolute men against the
fury of the Apaches.

Down in the roomiest of the caves Fanny and Ruth Harvey are listening
in dread anxiety to the sounds of savage warfare echoing from crag to
crag along the range, while every moment or two the elder turns to
moisten the cloth she holds to a wounded trooper's burning, tossing
head. Sergeant Wing is fevered indeed by this time, raging with misery
at thought of his helplessness and the scant numbers of the defence.
It is a bitter pill for the soldier to swallow, this of lying in
hospital when every man is needed at the front. At nine o'clock this
morning a veteran Indian fighter, crouching in his sheltered lookout
above the caves and scanning with practised eye the frowning front of
the range, declared that not an Apache was to be seen or heard within
rifle-shot, yet was in no wise surprised when, a few minutes later, as
he happened to show his head above the rocky parapet, there came
zipping a dozen bullets about his ears and the cliffs fairly crackled
with the sudden flash of rifles hidden up to that instant on every
side. Indians who can creep upon wagon-train or emigrant camp in the
midst of an open and unsheltered plain find absolutely no difficulty
in surrounding unsuspected and unseen a bivouac in the mountains.
Inexperienced officers or men would have been picked off long before
the opening of the general attack, but the Apaches themselves are the
first to know that they have veteran troopers to deal with, for up to
this moment only one has shown himself at all. At five minutes after
nine o'clock Lieutenant Drummond, glancing exultingly around upon his
little band of fighters, had blessed the foresight of Pasqual Morales
and his gang that they had so thoroughly fortified their lair against
sudden assault. Three on the southern, two on the northern brink of
the gorge and behind impenetrable shelter, and two more in reserve in
the canon, his puny garrison was in positi