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Iwoso regarded Hci with horror.
"Oh!" cried Bloketu.
"This one, too, is now well secured," I said.
We heard the scream of another kaiila and saw it, and its rider, plunging downward.
"Neighter of you," said Hci, regarding the two women, "roped as you are, will make difficult targets."
"Please untie me," begged Iwoso.
"Please untie me, Cuwignaka!" begged Bloketu.
Cuwignaka, in fury, went to Bloketu and slapped her head, back and forth, in the neck bonds.
She regarded him startled, blood at her mouth.
"How do you dare, without permission, to so put the name of a free man on your slave lips?" asked Cuwignaka.
Bloketu looked at Cuwignaka, startled, disbelievingly. He was now a man who had punished her.
"I am sorry," she whispered.
His eyes were fierce. I think she scarcey understood that it could be Cuwignaka.
"— Master," she added.
On the trail below, only some twenty feet or so below the ledge, charging upward, Yellow Knives, four or five abreast, mounted on painted kaiila, swept toward the top of the trail, some hundred feet or so to our right.
But a moment before the fanguard of his charging force could attain the summit the high, heavy structure of timbers and sharpened stakes was thrust into place. The stakes, anchored by the timbers, were tied together like fierce wooden stars. Kaiila, screaming, unable to check their forward momentum, plunged onto the stakes. Impaled and torn, pressed from behind, filling the air with hideous noises, they reared and twisted, throwing riders and biting and clawing at one another. More kaiila rushed foreard, charging behind them, striking into the bloody, halted mass. Riders slipped down among the animals, screaming. More kaiila, from behind, pressed forward. Dozens of animals and may riders were forced from the trail, sliding and plummeting down the steep face of Council Rock.
I saw one of the war chiefs of the Yellow Knives, whom I remembered from the summer camp, in his kaiila slip over the ledge. Still more Yellow Knives, not clear on what was ahead, were trying to force their way upward on the narrow trail. Men fought to escape the edge, cuting at one another even with knives. But those at the edge, often, other Yellow Knives pressing forward, were thrust, even fought, from the trail.
The air was rent with screaming, that of beasts and men. Bodies, thos of kaiila and Yellow Knives, slipped from the edge, plummeting downward. Lances snapped against the stone and the barricade, halted in their charge, seeing the impossiblity of advance under the current conditons, were trying to back their beasts from the barricade. This forced other beasts and men from the trail. Others, wildly, fought to turn their beasts. Some of these, successful, began to try to force their way back down the trail.
There was much shouting as well as screaming. I saw the movement of battle staffs. Their visibility, of course, was minimal, given the twistings of the irregualr, tortuous trail. More efficient were the blasts of war whistles. The trial then, long and winding, visible in many of its lengths from the height of the escarpment, seemed choked with Yellow Knives. It was like an odd, upward-moving, arrested river of beasts and men, suddenly stopped, immobilized, in its flow. We could have even see many Yellow Knives, puzzled, milling about, near the foot of the trail, hundreds of feet below. The trail, within its narrow boundaries, the rock on one side, the fall on the other, consituted a suitable trap, or slaughter cha
"No!" screamed Iwoso. "No!"
Lodges, with their poles, were thrown back and men energed, dragging at the ropes of small travois, heavily laden with stones. Others, with their hands, and levers, began to roll larger stones, even boulders, toward the edge of the escarpment.
"No!" cried Iwoso.
"Shall we gag her?" asked Cuwignaka.
"no," I said. "Let her cries, if they will, distract our attackers."
To this point we had struck not a blow. Yet I think taht more than a hundred and fifty Yellow Knives might already have perished, victims of that steep, dreadful trail, crawded from it, driven from it, trampled upon it, and some even falling under the weapons of their own fellows, fighting for space on the rugged ascent. Then began the leathal hail of stones, hundreds flung from above, dozens rolled and toppled over the edge. These stones, striking down, could not fail to find marks. They plunged into the seething mass at different points on the trail. Some of the larger stones even did their work more than once, striking men or kaiila from the trail at one point and then, bounding downward, striking the face of the rock here and there, to shatter into yet more men at a lower point in the ascendant trail. Some finally plunged, rolling and bounding downward, into the Yellow Knives far below on the grass.
Yellow Knives raised their shields but this did little good for the potency of the stons lay primarily not in their capacity or cut or penetrate but to transmit their considerabl force, bluntly, crushingly, suddenly, to the trget surface. Arms were broken in the shield straps. Men were struck from the backs of kaiila. Animals, maddened, screaming, hissing, snorting, squealing, reared and bolted. Dozens of men and animals, buffeted, losing their footing, crowded from the edge, slipped, scratching and screaming, down the rock's steep face.
Iwoso regarded the scene of carnage with horror.
Frenzied blasts on war whistles, relayed to the bottom of the trail, finally had their effect. Slowly, with difficulty on the narrow trail, some backing down, some turning, some falling, the Yellow Knives on the lower lengths of the trail, pressing back among their fellows at the foot of Council Rock, freed the lower ascents, enabling their trapped fellows on the upper reaches of the trail, those so exposed to our pleasures, to begin their own laborious, tortuous descent. Their retreat was harried by the further flinging of stones and rolling boulders.
The baricade at the summit of the trail, with its sharpened wooden stakes, with their bloodied points, was even temporarily removed, to permit the rolling down the trail of a great boulder. This the rear guard of the Yellow Knives, packed against their retreating fellows, the rock on one side the drop on the other, their eyes wide with horror, must watch bounding inexorably toward them. Then it struck amongst them. It took perhaps a dozen men from the trail and then bounded down the rock face and, a few Ihn later, skipping and leaping almost like a pebble, possessing such terrible forces, yet seeming so small from this height, it caromed off the foot of the rock face and then landed, rolling and bounding, among scattering Yellow Knives on the grass below.
Iwoso looked at Hci. She was helpless in her ropes. He did not speak to her.
The stones had been gathered over a period of days and brought to the height of Council Rock. The girls, of course, would not have known this, for thy had been in their bonds and hoods in the prison lodge.
"The trail is cleaing," said Cuwignaka. "Do you think they will go away?"
"No," I said.
"Where are the soldiers?" asked Cuwignaka.
"They must be somewhere about," I said.
"Look," said Hci, pointing downward.
A single rider, a Yellow Knife, in breechclout and paint, and with a full bo
"That is a brave man," said Cuwignaka.
"He is probably looking for a coup," said Hci.
The rider, tall on the kaiila, singing medicine, disdaining to lift his shield, rode past, below us.
"I recognize him," said Cuwignaka. "He is one of the war chiefs who delt with Watonka,"