Now and then a sinewy brown arm might incautiously project across the
gleaming surface of a rock, or a mop of coarse black hair appear above
the edge of a gully, either incident resulting in a quick interchange
of fire. That was all; yet the experienced frontiersmen knew that eyes
as keen as those of any wild animal of the jungle were watching
murderously their slightest movement.
Wyman, now reclining in agony against the base of the overhanging
cliff, directed the movements of his little command calmly and with
sober military judgment. Little by little, under protection of the
rifles of the three civilians, the uninjured infantrymen crept
cautiously about, rolling loosened bowlders forward into position,
until they finally succeeded in thus erecting a rude barricade between
them and the enemy. The wounded who could be reached were laboriously
drawn back within this improvised shelter, and when the black shadows
of the night finally shut down, all remaining alive were once more
clustered together, the injured lying moaning and ghastly beneath the
overhanging shelf of rock, and the girl, who possessed all the patient
stoicism of frontier training, resting in silence, her widely opened
eyes on those far-off stars peeping above the brink of the chasm, her
head pillowed on old Gillis's knee.
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