"Dew Drop here," piped a voice that seemed to come out of the air, but from just what direction none could say.
They looked about; peered into every corner and crevice, then faced each other questioningly.
"Hello!" shouted Frank, but only the echoes of his own voice came back to him.
"Mebby it's the Great Spirit she was tellin' us about," suggested Texas with a hoarseness in his throat that he tried vainly to down. "She's a dead one that's sure--"
"Dew Drop no go Happy Hunting Ground; Medicine man he go Happy Hunting Ground. Mebby Jesse Jame he happy Hunting Ground," came in the plaintive tone of the Indian maiden.
In a moment these hardy desperadoes who had faced death in a thousand forms, would feel their courage oozing from their finger tips and would make a run for the outer air.
"Where are you?" roared Frank. "Are you dead or alive?"
"Where?" bellowed Tony. "Where in the humping pizen snakes be you anyhow? You sound as if you was over my head, but if you be you're a dead one, and that goes."
Frank with a sudden thought in his mind was shading his eyes from the flaming torches and peering up into the shadows. There, more than ten feet above their heads, he saw the form of the little Indian maiden wedged in a crevice of rocks where she had evidently been hurled by the sudden explosion.
"Jump, you little devil," shouted Texas, "we'll catch you."
"Not jump? Don't be afraid," reassured Frank.
"Dew Drop um no jump. Um fast," she wailed.
"She's wedged in between the rocks," yelled Tony. "Git a ladder somebody quick."
Everybody laughed but it was evident that Tony in his excitement was in dead earnest.
"Yes, how we going to git the gal down?" demanded Texas.
"Can't one of you take a running jump and reach her?" cried Frank. "If my leg wasn't game I'd do it myself."
"Yes, you would," sneered Tony. "You ain't no bird and neither be I. That's twelve feet if its one up there."
"I've got an idee," interrupted Homely Harry. "I'll stand agin the wall and you fellers climb up on top of me, one top of tother. I've seen 'em do that in a circus once. We kin git her down that way."
"You're the only one in the bunch that's got a head on his shoulders about now I reckon. I ain't much on the climb, but try it and if you don't get her, I'll go to the top of the pile myself."