For themselves, the boys were amply protected there on the side of the
Frying-pan where the handle stretched out into the open land toward the
mountain. Perhaps here was once a torrent flowing from the basin-like hollow
walled round with rock; at any rate, great bowlders were scattered all along
the rim as though spewed from the basin by some mighty force of the bygone
ages. The soil, as so often happens in the West, was fertile to the very edge
of the Frying-pan and young pinons and bushes had taken root there and managed
to keep themselves alive with the snow-moisture of winter, in spite of the
scanty rainfall the rest of the year.
The boys were amply protected, yes; but there was not a drop of water save
what they had in their canteens, and there was no feed for their horses unless
they chose to nibble tender twigs off the bushes near them and call that food.
There was, of course, the grain in the packs, but there was neither time nor
opportunity to get it out. If it came to a siege, luck and his boys were in a
bad way, and they knew it. They were penned as well as protected there in that
rocky, brushy neck. The most that they could do was to discourage any rush
from those back in the grove; as to getting through that grove themselves, and
out in the open, there was not one chance in a hundred that they could do it.
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