"If 'ee take my advice, cap, I'd let the mules and weemen keep for'ard, with a lot o' the men to look arter 'em; them that's ridin' the meanest critters. It'll be nose an' tail when we do go; and if they starts now, yur see wa kin easy catch up with 'em t'other side o' the parairar." "You are right, Rube! We cannot stay long here. Our provisions will give out. They must move ahead. Is that mountain near the line of our course, think you?" As Seguin spoke, he pointed to a snow-crowned peak that towered over the plain, far off to the eastward. "The trail we oughter take for the ole mine passes clost by it, cap'n. To the south'art o' yon snowy, thur's a pass; it's the way I got clur myself." "Very well; the party can take the mountain for their guide. I will despatch them at once." About twenty men, who rode the poorest horses, were selected from the band. These, guarding the atajo and captives, immediately set out and rode off in the direction of the snowy mountain. El Sol went with this party, in charge of Dacoma and the daughter of our chief. The rest of us prepared to defend the pass. Our horses were tied in a defile; and we took our stands where we could command the embouchure of the canon with our rifles. We waited in silence for the approaching foe. As yet no war-whoop had reached us; but we knew that our pursuers could not be far off; and we knelt behind the rocks, straining our eyes down the dark ravine. It is difficult to give an idea of our position by the pen. The ground we had selected as the point of defence was unique in its formation, and not easily described; yet it is necessary you should know something of its peculiar character in order to comprehend what followed. The stream, after meandering over a shallow, shingly channel, entered the canon through a vast gate-like gap, between two giant portals. One of these was the abrupt ending of the granite ridge, the other a detached mass of stratified rock. Below this gate the channel widened for a hundred yards or so, where its bed was covered with loose boulders and logs of drift timber. Still farther down, the cliffs approached each other, so near that only two horsemen could ride between them abreast; and beyond this the channel again widened, and the bed of the stream was filled with rocks, huge fragments that had fallen from the mountain.