S22 The Book of Woodcraft 



It didn't take Burns five seconds to decide what should 

 be done; he had two of his men harnessed with the sus- 

 penders of their comrades, and made them lean well over 

 the precipice, while the harness was used to hold them in 

 place; these men were to fire with their revolvers at the 

 enemy beneath, and for a volley or so they did very effec- 

 tive work, but their Irish blood got the better of their rea- 

 son and, in their excitement, they began to throw their 

 revolvers at the enemy; this kind of ammunition was rather 

 too costly, but it suggested a novel method of annihilating 

 the enemy. Brown ordered his men to get together and 

 roll several of the huge boulders, which covered the surface 

 of the mountain, and drop them over on the unsuspecting 

 foe. The noise was frightful, the destruction sickening. 

 Our volleys were still directed against the inner faces of the 

 cave and the roof, and the Apaches seemed to realize that 

 their only safety lay in crouching close to the great stone 

 heap in front; but even this precarious shelter was now taken 

 away; the air was filled with the bounding, plunging frag- 

 ments of stone, breaking into thousands of pieces, with 

 other thousands behind, crashing with the momentum 

 gained in a descent of hundreds of feet. No human voice 

 could be heard in such a cyclone of wrath; the volume of 

 dust was so dense that no eye could pierce it, but over on 

 our left, it seemed that for some reason we could still dis- 

 cern several figures guarding that extremity of the enemy's 

 line — the old Medicine Man, who, decked in all the 

 panoply of his office, with feathers on head, decorated shirt 

 on back, and all the sacred insignia known to his people, 

 had defied the approach of death, and kept his place, firing 

 coolly at everything that moved on our side, that he could 

 see, his rifle reloaded and handed back by his assistants — 

 either squaws or young men — it was impossible to tell 

 which, as only the arms could be noted in the air. Major 



