the
Chis-chis-chash lay snugly under their hairy rugs, drawing them over
their heads, shutting out the world of spirits and sound and cold.

In the ceaseless round of time the night was departing to the westward,
when as though it were in a dream the old warrior was conscious of
noise. His waking sense was stirred. Rapid, frosty crackling of snow
ground by horse's hoofs came through the crevices of his covering. All
unusual, he sat up with a savage bang, as it were, and bent a stiff ear
to the darkness. His senses were electric, but the convolutions of
his brain were dead. A rifle shot, far away but unmistakable. Others
followed; they came fast. But not until the clear notes of a bugle
blazed their echoing way up the rock walls did he, the Fire Eater, think
the truth. He made the lodge shake with the long yell of war. He did
the things of a lifetime now and he did them in a trained, quick way.
He shoved his feet into his moccasins and did no more because of the
urgency of the case; then he reached for his rifle and belt and stood
in the dark lodge aroused. His sleep was gone but he did not comprehend.
Listening for the briefest of moments, he heard amid the yelping of his
own people the dull, resonant roar which he knew was the white man's
answer.

Fired into a maddened excitement he snatched up his precious boy, and
seizing a robe ran out of the lodge followed by his squaw. Overhead the
sky was warming but: the canon was blue dark. Every moment brought the
shots and roar nearer. Plunging through the snow with his burden, the
Fire Eater ran up a rocky draw which made into the main canyon. He had
not gone many arrow-flights of distance before the rushing storm of the
pony-soldiers swept past his deserted lodge. Bullets began to whistle
about him, and glancing back he saw the black form of his squaw stagger
and lie slowly down in the snow. He had, by this time, quite recovered
the calm which comes to the tired-out man when tumult overtakes him.
Putting the boy down on a robe behind a rock, and standing naked in the
frosty air he made his magazine gun blaze until empty; then picking the
boy up ran on higher up the rocks until he was on the table land of the
top of the canon. Here he resumed his shooting, but the darkness and
distance made it difficult to see. The noise of the fight clattered and
clanged up from the depths to him and echoed down from above where the
charge had gone. Other Indians joined him and they poure