ce? No. There was a way more congenial to
their tastes--more _a propos_ to their habits. It should be done by
their horses. They knew the sort of game, for it is not the first time
they have played it. The piece of print is unrolled, and at each end
tied to a horse's tail. The owners spring to the backs of the animals,
then urge them in the opposite directions till the strain comes; at the
pluck the web gives way, and he who holds the longer part becomes
possessor of the whole.

Others, not gamblers, out of sheer devilry and diversion, similarly
attach their stuffs, and gallop over the ground with the prints trailing
fifty yards behind them. In the frenzied frolic that had seized hold of
them they forgot their slain comrades, still unburied. They whoop,
shout, and laugh till the cliffs, in wild, unwonted echo, send back the
sound of their demoniac mirth. A riot rare as original--a true saturnal
of savages.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A LIVING TOMB.

Literally buried alive, as Walt Wilder had said, were he and his
companion.

They now understood what had caused the strange noise that mystified
them--the rumbling followed by a crash. No accidental _debacle_ or
falling of a portion of the cliff, as they had been half supposing; but
a deed of atrocious design--a huge rock rolled by the united strength of
the savages, until it rested over the orifice of the shaft, completely
coping and closing it.

It may have been done without any certain knowledge of their being
inside--only to make things sure. It mattered not to the two men thus
cruelly enclosed, for they knew that in any case there was no hope of
their being rescued from what they believed to be a living tomb.

That it was such neither could doubt. The guide, gifted with herculean
strength, had tried to move the stone on discovering how it lay. With
his feet firmly planted in the projections below, and his shoulder to
the rock above, he had given a heave that would have lifted a loaded
waggon from its wheels.

The stone did not budge with all this exertion. There was not so much
as motion. He might as successfully have made trial to move a mountain
from its base. He did not try again. He remembered the rock itself.
He had noticed it while they were searching for a place to conceal
themselves, and had been struck with its immense size. No one man could
have stirred it from its place. It must have taken at least twenty
Indians. No matter how many