jutted out from the mountain-side. "There's your King's symbol,
and be d----d to it!" he shouted; and added, "What's the good of a
King's symbol when we're all goin' to lose our hair?"

He was under full head-way again in a moment. As we shot past the rock we
all turned to look; and there, sure enough, was the long-sought-for
sign.

VII.

THE FIGHT IN THE CANON.

As we fled along the valley, and in a few moments heard the sound of the
Indians pursuing us, my mind was chiefly occupied with considerations of
the quality which we denominate fear. I perceived that this purely
occasional passion had a very direct bearing upon my own especial
science of archaeology. I reflected that had I been engaged in building a
city at the moment when that irritating flight of arrows fell among
us----the sting of one of which I still felt smarting upon my
forehead----I should assuredly have ceased at once the building of that
city, and should have moved rapidly away. And thus an excellently
well-built city, that would have delighted archaeologists of the future,
would have been lost to the world. Putting the matter yet more closely:
here I had just found the sign for which I and my companions had been
toilsomely searching for a considerable time; the sign which
unquestionably would lead us to the most interesting archaeological
discovery that ever had been made. And yet, instead of stopping to
study this sign earnestly, that I might understand all the meaning of
it, I was hastening away from it with all possible speed; and for no
better reason than that certain barbarians, whose knowledge of
archaeology was not even rudimentary, were pursuing me that they might
take my life--an imperfectly expressed concept, by-the-way; for life can
be taken only in the limited sense of depriving another of it; it cannot
be taken in the full sense of deprivation and acquisition combined.
These several reflections so stirred my bile against the Indians in
pursuit of us that I began to have a curiously blood-thirsty longing for
our actual battling with them to begin; for I was possessed by a most
unscientific desire to balance our account by killing several of them.
And I confess that this desire was increased as I looked at the dead
body of poor Dennis, lying limply across the fore-shoulders of Rayburn's
horse.

It was with real satisfaction, therefore, that I obeyed Rayburn's order
to halt, that we might make ready for the fight to begin. Th