lert and watchful. It would not do to have him fall asleep now. And
then once in a while he listened, God only knows how wistfully, for the
sound of cavalry coming across the westward plain. It surely was time
for Sieber and the troops to be coming if the former had carried out his
intentions. Pike could see nothing of the road towards Jarvis Pass and
only a glimpse here and there of the plateau itself. The foliage in the
larger trees was too thick. He longed to clamber to his watch-tower but
felt well assured that one step outside the parapet would make him a
target for the Indian rifles. First as an experiment he put his hat on a
stick and cautiously raised it above their barricade. Two bullets
instantly "zipped" over his head and dropped flat as pancakes from the
rock overhead. The experiment was conclusive.

At last the straining ears of the watchers were attracted by strange
sounds. Low calls in savage tongue from down the hill were answered on
both sides and from above. The Indians had evidently thoroughly
"reconnoitred" the position, and had found that there was actually no
place around the rock from which they could see and open fire on the
besieged. The sun was now high overhead. Odd sounds as of dragging
objects began to be heard from the top of the rock, and this was kept up
for fully an hour. Neither Pike nor Jim could imagine what it meant, but
neither dared for an instant to leave his post.

It must have been eleven o'clock and after, when, all of a sudden, a
black shadow rushed through the air, and Pike started almost to his feet
as a huge log fell from above and bounded from the jagged rocks in front
of them. Then came another, tumbling one upon the other, wedging and
jostling, and speedily rising in a huge pile several feet high. More and
more they came; then smaller ones; then loose dry branches and roots in
quantities. And then, as the great heap grew and grew, an awful thought
occurred to the old trooper. At first it seemed as though the Indians
meant to try and form a "curtain," sheltered by which they could crawl
upon their foes; but when the brushwood came, a fiercer, far more
dreadful purpose was revealed. "My God!" he groaned, "they mean to roast
us out."

[Illustration: ALL OF A SUDDEN A BLACK SHADOW RUSHED THROUGH THE AIR.]

CHAPTER X.

LITTLE NED'S SHOT.

From the babel of voices that reached old Pike's ears every now and
then, and the bustle and noise going on overhead, he judg