In another instant, before I could lift my gun to my shoulder, one of them had bounded towards me and wrenched it from my grasp, while the other sprung at me with the evident intention of clinching me. If I had then the time to think, I fear, loyal American as I might be, my thoughts might have corroborated Brighton Bill's opinions touching the sanity of Uncle Sam. Fortunately, I had no time to become critically disloyal. My hunting-knife had been drawn, and at the very moment when his hot and vindictively fierce breath came searingly to my face, was buried to the very hilt in his heart. As he fell, the other of my assailants, with my own rifle clubbed, struck me a heavy blow upon the shoulder. It nearly felled me to the earth. Then, dropping the weapon, he sprang upon me, making a desperate clutch for the hand in which my knife was grasped. As he seized my wrist, I threw the knife from me as far as I could, and grappled with him. He attempted to draw his own. I, however, had grasped him by a peculiarly tender portion of his person, which modesty prevents me from naming. The pain of this prevented his using his knife, and in the contest we both fell on the sloping side of the cañon, clinched together firmly. Now, commenced the struggle for life. Rolling over and over, now on the short turf, and again amidst the dense and tangled chapparal--at one moment the red-skin would be above me, and in the next I would be stretched on his writhing body. Whenever I got the chance, and one of my hands free, I would seize a handful of sand, if it was within reach, and thrust it in the mouth and eyes of the Indian. He was not slow in taking the lesson I gave him. He began to follow suit. After rolling down the side of the cañon for some hundred yards or more, panting with the desperate struggle, he opened his mouth to gasp for breath. At the time I was above him, and grasping a handful of sand, I forced it into his gaping mouth. [Illustration: "He opened his mouth to gasp for breath; I was above him, and grasping a handful of sand, I forced it into his gaping mouth."--_Page 125._] It had its effect. Literally choking with the enforced dose, he loosened me. At the same time, he violently threw up his hands, as a man might do in the agony of strangulation. Then, with a supreme effort, I groped for his knife. Having found it, I drew it from its sheath, and, at last, the terrible struggle which had been forced upon me was over. When, at occasional times, I recall it now, it seems to my recollection as if that brief contest for existence had nearly maddened me. Scarcely did I appear to possess consciousness of any of my actions. And yet, I know that I inflicted on him some fifteen to twenty wounds, any one of which might or must have been a fatal one. As I found myself once more upon my feet, it was a tolerably difficult matter for me to realize that I was still living.