doctor.

"Yes, father. That was only the melancholy being driven off," said
Chris with a forced laugh. "I'm going to be cheerful enough, and shoot
straight when the Indians come. I'm sorry for them, but I must, for
everybody's sake."

"Yes, to be sure, for everybody's sake. Feel better?"

"Yes, father."

"That's right. I was low-spirited, too, a little while ago, for I felt
doubtful of success. I don't now. Yours was a splendid idea, and
unless something unfortunate occurs we shall succeed."

"I hope we shall," thought Chris, but he felt doleful in the extreme,
and the idea would force itself upon him that he had sent his old friend
to a cruel death.

At last the various objects around seemed to grow plain as the grey dawn
began to lighten the sky; but the place looked terrible in the ghastly
light. There beneath them was what looked like a black chasm, the one
they were to fill up with stones from the jagged shelves upon which they
crouched nearly a hundred feet higher, while higher still, right up for
another three hundred feet or more, to where the saw-like edge was
marked clearly against the ever-lightening sky, wherever the boy's eyes
rested there were masses of stone which looked as if a touch would set
them in motion and start others to come thundering down, sweeping all
before them into a vast heap which would fill up the chasm, even as high
as the rocks amongst which his party was hidden.

The time had come for hiding, and Chris and his father were soon lying
down behind some stunted bushes through which they could peer right
along the bottom of the gulch far away towards where the side gully ran
up in the direction of the tableland in which the great valley with its
rock city was cut.

Thoughts began to come fast now through Chris's brain, and the first
were in connection with the mules and ponies they had left to graze up
to the right of the gully. Would they stay there peacefully browsing on
the green shoots of the shrubs that were abundant, or come wandering
down to reach their old pasture? The question was open to many doubtful
answers which did not come, and they had to give way to thoughts
connected with Griggs, who, the boy felt, must by this time be astir
with his gun.

And with what result?

None for a long, long time, during which the sun as it rose had chased
away the horrors that had lingered in the gulch, to display all its
wondrous glories of light and shade with trickling