He stood halted, staring like a demented man at a massive rock, a huge monster with sheer, precipitous front, filling every foot of space from the cliff wall to the river, completely closing, as by a wall of masonry, the narrow foot-path along which we had advanced unhindered the day before.  It was easy to see from whence that rock mass came; the great fresh scar on the overhanging cliff summit high above told the fatal story of its detachment.  Yet how had it fallen so suddenly and with such deadly accuracy across the path?  Was it a strange accident, a caprice of fate, or was it rather the hellish work of design?

None knew at that moment; yet we stood there stupefied, staring into each others’ despairing faces, feeling we were hopeless prisoners doomed to perish miserably within the gloom confines of that ghastly, haunted hell.

CHAPTER XX

BACKS TO THE WALL

“This is Indian treachery,” I said decisively, my eyes searching the cliffs, “nor will they remain long inactive now they have fairly caught us in their trap.  Let us get back out of this narrow way; there may be other loosened rocks where this one came from.”

“Back where?”

“To some spot where we can defend ourselves in case of attack.  These will prove different from any savages I have ever known if we fail to hear from them as soon as we are ready.”

“But,” protested De Noyan, as we scrambled retreating up the slope, “if there is no way leading from this pit of death, how are those devils going to get in?  Will it not be more likely they will be content to starve us?”

“’Tis not Indian nature to hide in patience after having trapped their victims.  Although there is no apparent way out to our eyes, nor time to search for one, yet we may put confidence in this:  they never bottled us here without knowing some means whereby they might complete their work.”

“It is likely to be a fight, then?”

“Either that or a massacre; God knoweth.”

“If, friend Benteen,” boomed Cairnes, now well in our front, and prodigal of voice as ever, “you expect a stand-up battle with the devils, ’tis my judgment you will find few spots better adapted for defence than yonder—­there where the rock juts out so far; ’tis like a sloping roof to protect us from above.”

It was as he described, a place fitted by nature for such a contest, the upper stratum of rock projecting so far forward as almost to form a cave beneath, while, partially blocking the centre of this darkened opening, uprose a great square slab of stone, forming of itself no small protection to a party crouching in its shadow.  Moreover the ground fell away sharply, the higher point being twenty feet above the water level; and this at the widest part of the gorge, the entire slope thickly strewn with bowlders of varying size.

“You have made soldierly choice,” I acknowledged heartily, after a hasty survey.  “It would be difficult to discover a more proper spot for purposes of defence.  St. Andrew! but three of us ought to hold that mound against quite a party.”