sure-Trove

When Dick passed the crest of the ridge and began the descent
toward the fatal pass, his heart beat heavily. The terror and
shock of the night before, those distant shots and shouts,
returned to him, and it was many minutes before he could shake
off a dread that was almost superstitious in its nature. But
youth, health, and the sunlight conquered. The day was
uncommonly brilliant. The mountains rolled back, green on the
slopes, blue at the crests, and below him, like a brown robe, lay
the wavering plain across which they had come.

Dick could see no sign of human life down there. No rejoicing
Sioux warrior galloped over the swells, no echo of a triumphant
war whoop came to his ear. Over mountain and plain alike the
silence of the desert brooded. But high above the pass great
black birds wheeled on lazy pinions.

Dick believed more strongly than ever that the Sioux had gone
away. Savage tribes do not linger over a battlefield that is
finished; yet as he reached the bottom of the slope his heart
began to beat heavily again, and he was loath to leave the
protecting shadow of the pines. He fingered his rifle, passing
his hand gently over the barrel and the trigger. It was a fine
weapon, a beautiful weapon, and just at this moment it was a
wonderful weapon. He felt in its full force, for the first time
in his life, what the rifle meant to the pioneer.

The boy, after much hesitation and a great searching of eye and
ear, entered the pass. At once the sunlight dimmed. Walls as
straight as the side of a house rose above him three of four
hundred feet, while the distance between was not more than thirty
feet. Dwarf pines grew here and there in the crannies of the
cliffs, but mostly the black rock showed. Dwarf pines also grew
at the bottom of the pass close to either cliff, and Dick kept
among them, bending far down and advancing very slowly.

Fifty yards were passed, and still there was no sound save a
slight moaning through the pass, which Dick knew was the sigh of
the wind drawn into the narrow cleft. It made him shudder, and
had he not been of uncommon courage he would have turned back.

He looked up. The great black birds, wheeling on lazy pinions,
seemed to have sunk lower. That made him shudder, too, but it
was another confirmation of his belief that all the Sioux had
gone. He went eight or ten yards farther and then stopped short.
Before him lay two dead horses and an overturned wa