Thus reinforced, the squadrons resumed the advance, followed closely by the peons, who derived much enheartenment from such warlike adherents, and, passing the detachment from Monte Tesoro still ensconced in the pine and cedar woods, the throng poured into the valley with loud clamour echoed by the assembled rebels. This joyous uproar did not tend to reassure the beleaguered Mexicans, though its cause was not perceptible.
Long and patiently had the environed garrison been awaiting the token of well faring with the adventurers who had so daringly left that shelter.
Only in the end of the night had the sudden, and, for the moment, inexplicable apparition of the cattle on which had been imposed that fiery burden, seemed to reveal the operations of their friends.
The charge of the furious and panic-stricken creatures, whose hides were singed and smoked with a nauseating odour, was unresisted by the rebels, huddled together just out of gunshot of the farm, in the obscurity. Nevertheless, as soon as the true nature of this attack was clear, and the more active Indians had speared those animals which had not broken their necks and extinguished the flames in the ditch, the alarm calmed down. It was at this juncture that don Benito, at the head of a hundred horsemen, galloped out of the corral and executed a terrible slashing and hewing, sweeping round amid carnage, and returning with insignificant loss. The moral effect was even greater than the material, for those of the insurgents who had previously thought nothing of rushing up to the farmhouse, and firing a shot at random amid tipsy threats and obscene imprecations, withdrew to a safe distance, and vociferated for the self-constituted leaders to evince their genius.
It was as don Benito's troop returned within the defences that they heard, to their dismay, the well-known war cry of the Apaches only too recently impressed on the hearing of all, and the shout of their newfound robber allies.
Of Oliver, the Englishman, and their followers, no intelligence whatever. It is only doing the master of the farm justice, as well as his family, to say that deep distress was added to that they felt in their plight with the fear that their daring friends had all fallen into some trap of the cunning savages now foremost in opposition.
The aurora appeared, and the whole valley was revealed, full of the rebels, amongst whom was added, as well as the sixty marauders who held captain Pedrillo as chief, the full hundred Apaches, whose proud and domineering carriage defined them from the Yaquis born under the yoke which these had never experienced. Besides, before the heat of the day forced both besiegers and besieged to take a siesta, the already enormous concourse was swollen by the last fragments of the dispersed column finding their way thither, burdened with plunder.
All the morning had passed in rash and irregular attacks on the houses, but when they were not repulsed, the few score Indians who clambered over the stockade were cut down by the horsemen inside. Twice the Apaches had charged up to the walls, but, apparently, merely to test the watchfulness of the inmates and the range of their firearms, for they made no assault on the palisades, to pull and hack at which, or even more to alight and clamber over, would have been ignoble in a horse Indian.
Still no sign of the party that had sallied forth.
Successful in that sally of their own, the Mexican gentlemen wished to retaliate on the Apaches in particular for the insult implied in their departing from their war custom of never charging an enclosure or building of any kind. But don Benito reminded them of the ladies who would be undefended if the horsemen were cut off, and pointed to the swarms of carousing Indians blackening the rising ground, where they had mounted to watch the farm with lustful gaze.
Little by little, after Pedrillo and his mongrels had quieted the hatred of the revolted Yaquis for anyone who reminded them of the superior race, he obtained a kind of rule over their leaders, only less potent than that which they had promptly accorded the Apaches. Iron Shirt was an idol. The fact of his having but three days before swept down upon that same stronghold still defying their hosts, and snatched the proprietor's daughter and the cream of the horses merrily away, sufficed to make each of these warriors to be followed by a tag-rag of open-eyed Yaquis wherever they strayed in the wide encampment.
The food and liquor were placed under guard; the drunkards, who were plunged in stupor, were bundled into the hollows out of the way, the horse thieves who had been racing about were pulled off the bare backs, and made to squat down and await orders for their superabundant energy to be more profitably expended. The weapons were served out anew, with some discrimination as to the bearer, so that the strong were no longer puzzled with arms for which light-handed urchins sufficed, and the youths disembarrassed of immense spears like Goliath's, and clubs that the famous giant races of the Hidden Cities could alone have swung.
The women and children, too, were pushed back, and set to cooking and other menial offices, which must have bewildered them as to the advantages of revolution.
Therefore, Oliver and his associates soon beheld the impassible barrier spread out broadly between them, and the surrounded fort became during the day more and more formidable by these evidences of discipline.
Happily their neighbourhood was not suspected. The column defeated on the previous night was composed of ignorant boors, who thought not at all by day to give an intelligible account of the lancers, who, indeed, having charged them from the ambush, were not well examined in the hurry-scurry.
"What are they waiting for?" queried Mr. Gladsden, impatiently. "Surely not for more reinforcements, when they are already a hundred to one!"
"That's the answer," said the white hunter. "Yon long string of naked copperskins dragging that shining object at their tail."
"A cannon?"
"Yes! Two shots o' that and thar will be a hole in the farmhouse that a herd of buffalo might traverse. Good night to our hidalgo if they get that piece trained on the house. When a bullet hits those grey blocks, hewn out of the volcano pumice stone, it will crumble like glass, and no two ways about it. Thecasais a case."
"And can we do nothing, absolutely nothing? Can we not even pierce that multitude, and enter among our friends and die with them."
"Well, I like a gentleman that has boys in the tender leaf still, a-talking of dying anywhar's and so airly yit. Ef you hanker to run the resk o' dying, that's a man's talk, and you can volunteer to come along with me."
"Come along with you, Oliver?"
"Yes. If that cannon fires twice into that house, I tell 'ee, thar'll be nothing but the worst kind of smashed fruit that ever figgered in an old aunty's preserve pots. They may fire her off once, but not twice, if I hev' the right sort of luck in my idee. I think this sport hes gone quite far enough."
By this time Mr. Gladsden had become reconciled to Oliver having "idees."
"I am with you," he simply said, "and the more desperate the enterprise, the better it bids to quiet my blood, which is at boiling point."
"You'll hev' all the despiritness you want," answered the Oregonian.
Then, turning to the Mexicans, who had waited the conclusion of their dialogue restlessly, he continued:
"Whar's them skyrockets? Hand 'em here, Silvano. Keep close as you hev' done all along. When you see those fireworks cavorting (curvetting) around that big camp right smart, you sail in down the hill and stick every red nigger till you are right up to the house, if your heart backs your breastbone so far. And mark! Your government offers two hundred and fifty dollars for Injin scalps, and you kin have my share this trip, and welkim!"
His speech was received with enthusiasm, notably the peroration. He illustrated his intention to make scalps by throwing off his uniform coat, cutting his shirtsleeves off at the shoulder, and removing the spurs which he had donned for the ride. Then he took up a handful of live oak leaves, bruised them, and dyed his bared arms, neck and face with the juice to a brown hue. At his suggestion, the Englishman left his arms free and disguised his fairness of hue in the same manner.
"Do you see that rising ground up which they are toiling with that big gun? That's our aim. Come on!"
"In the midst of them?"
"Plum centre."
Which was all the reply the query elicited.
The Yaquis occupied the further side of a long valley, almost in an unbroken mass. These who elsewhere completed an environment of the hacienda were in groups, which changed position at fancy, and were less warlike than the main body. The rear was left to a natural guard; the inaccessibility of the hill, where, too, a barranca, or deep chasm, with perpendicular sides, caused by a torrent suddenly cutting its way to a subterranean reservoir, almost at right angles, divided the incline.
The watch, as is common with a sudden gathering, was nobody's business.
The Apaches and the Mexican half-breeds, self-constituted chiefs, were now scattered among the Yaquis, teaching the handling of weapons and promising them all manner of delights when the farm should be captured.
Oregon Ol. and his associate struck from the wood which concealed their companions, away at first from the valley, but on arriving fairly upon the north side, they advanced parallel with its crest, every now and then perceiving a flag waving on top of the hacienda. The ground was so rough that they had alternations of leaps and creeps over obstacles of which the hunter made light, but which delayed the Englishman. On reaching the gorge, the former paused to admit of the other coming up.
"Thar's our route," said the hunter, pointing down into this open tunnel and along its incline upward, "We kin settle down to a long scramble, but all the way thar'll be no alarms; those rum soakers haven't a good eye among the heap."
"That is the more gratifying, as there are enough of them to convert us into a pair of pincushions with their arrows."
Nevertheless, he could not help a shiver of repugnance to adventuring at such a risk.
"I do not say we could do it by night, for down thar the twilight allers dwells, save whar the line of sun glare travels at the bottom. But thar is no other road."
They spent a few moments in further disguise, removing or staining with red oxides every part of their remaining attire and exposed skin which would not favour the supposition to a chance observer that they were Indians floundering in the abyss where they had blundered during intoxication. They were armed only with knives and revolvers, but each carried one of the rockets.
They proceeded to descend the steep up and down side with all the precaution requisite. Difficult was not the word for their task, for none but a maniac or a lover or such as these staking all on the chance of being infinite service to their fellows, would have hazarded themselves.
The descent was a series of slides, checked by dwarf shrubs and rocks of all imaginable forms, cut, ground, polished, jagged by the water and sand; now and then, without any warnings, there were cracks and holes three or four yards wide at the remote bottom of which was to be heard a melancholy soughing and roaring as of raging demons or oppressed souls. Out of several, a thick, noisome, warm vapour sluggishly oozed. Once, when they had hardly succeeded in crossing a part of which the rim was of crumbling sand, Oliver had made a remark on the judiciousness of his comrade awaiting him there, but the answer was so stern and impregnated with such resolution that he never again remonstrated.
At last the centre of the trough was attained.
But here the chaos of sand, shrubs, and rocks, became next to inextricable, and to proceed up through the hindrances, varying each instant in material but not in degree, would have been pronounced simply preposterous by the most exacting.
Nevertheless, Oliver was a man whom nothing could stop in his purpose, for he twined in and out, crawled as supple as a serpent, thought nothing of his hands and knees exposed to the adamantine sands and the harsh catclaw bushes that would have frightened the half-naked savages, and if ofttimes he was compelled to retrace his steps when he had ventured into a non-egress, it was only the better to resume his unwearied way.
"I'm no hog," growled he once, when he paused to suck a more than usually deep briar scratch which he believed poisonous, "and I know when I hev' my fill o' sich 'snaking,' but it's got to be did. Besides," looking up from the semiobscurity to the top of the gorge where the sky glowed the more gorgeously by contrast, "night must not catch us no farther up, and agen," sniffing like an old sailor, "ain't thar rain in the air?"
"I am stifled with the sulphur reeking out of these cracks," returned his companion; "on this roof of Old Nick's kitchen, I really am not aware I have a nose upon me for weather scenting."
Oliver grunted as a kind of quiet laugh, and on he scrambled.
At the same time that one would have deemed all his faculties absorbed in picking the course and caring for his own safety, the hunter found time, not merely to caution his comrade, but to intervene at moments of peril. This constant attention in safekeeping once even almost led to his losing his life or limbs, for in choosing for himself the wider part of a crack, the edge gave way altogether, and but for Gladsden clutching by the side, with a little fold of the skin, too, in the grasp, the hunter must have fallen within the crust.
"Thank'ee, pard.!" observed the guide, wincing comically; "That time you grabbed flesh and ha'r. A little more of sich a grip, an' you'd hev' had to leave me behind, sot here; on my hind legs, a-howling!"
At last, after nearly twice the three hours assigned too rashly for the whole effort had been spent in scaling the anfractuosities at which a mountain sheep would have baulked, they had at all events ascended the barranca and were under the centre of the part of the hill where the Yaquis had dragged an old forty-pounder, brought over by the conquerors, and for long rusting at some farm in the neighbourhood. Their rejoicing at the accomplishment of their work coincided so closely with that of the two white men that the latter smiled to be so indirectly cheered.
Stopping to take breath, they looked back with relief and pride at the horrible gulfy path which they had overcome, darkening into blackness with the failing light.
Whilst the cannon was placed on some logs so that it could be trained on the hacienda, to the level of which this hill almost rose, the Yaquis were silent, so interested were they in the operation superintended by Lieutenant Garcia, inflated into abnormal pomposity by becoming the cynosure.
"Up!" said Oliver in this silence.
They had the abrupt side to climb when they would be beside the amateur artillerists. After what they had overcome this affair was merely one of time. The brink of the barranca was armed by stony mounds and the wrecks of half a dozen pines of the giant species, which must have been an imposing sight for miles around before the lightning or the tempest shattered them. Ensconced in this natural barricade, not more than three hundred feet from the nearest of the foe, they could easily take the repose they deserved, whilst studying the scene and the actors.
On their front, to the right, the hacienda and its corrals, into which they could gaze across the gully; farther away the forest where the Mexican detachment lay. Beside them, the hill covered with the insurgents, and more and still more of them in the vales. Disseminated thus, they seemed a veritable swarm of locusts, such as covers the plains of Arizona and Colorado.
They recognised without difficulty Captain Pedrillo on his horse, with his wooden leg sticking out and twitching free of the stirrup; the Apache chiefs, knowing nothing about ordnance, left the Mexicans to manage the loading of the cannon with blasting powder. A pile of the powder cans, some partly open and some altogether stove in and lidless, with all the carelessness of the inexperienced, stood near the piece on its wooden frame; at that distance the Englishman could even see the brand on the tins of the sun in glory of the Rayo del Sol Mining Company, from the works of which, by Regulus Pueblo, they had been taken by its truant ore carriers.
Darkness fell, deeper than usually, which confirmed Oliver in his forecast as to a tempest approaching, but the peons worked on at the clumsy pedestal of the cannon by the flare of torches.
Seeing that the piece would surely be in place, Captain Pedrillo, Iron Shirt, and the Apache subchiefs went into a large tent on the brow of the hill. It was open on the face towards the hacienda above, and consequently they were no longer visible to the two adventurers, who could see only the guard of Indians at the same point.
It had fallen a very black night, we say. Not a star peeped out among the heavy clouds grazing the treetops and rim of the bowl in the centre of which Monte Tesoro flaunted its defiant colours. In the northward, long peals of thunder rolled without any lightning being visible.
Whether from the effect of the atmosphere, or by the presentiment of the assault by the multitude of besiegers being imminent, a kind of gloom seemed to reign in the hacienda; the courts were deserted, the sentries were almost unseen, and their "all's well" but feebly re-echoed along the barriers. Not one light sparkled at an aperture to cheer the two watchers on the hill in the heart of the hostile camp.
On the other hand, without, at fires kindled far enough away not to expose the crowds encircling them to gunshot, the rebels noisily kept holiday, shouting and cheering and singing.
In the tent, formed of curtains and carpets thrown over supports of tree stems, erected with all the ingenuity of a people expert by tradition in hut building, the three chiefs of the allied foes of Sonora were in conference.
Each had already gained a hold on the masses,—the Apache by having shown with his handful of warriors that the Mexicans could be bearded in their houses; the Mexican by his notorious feud with the farmer gentry; and Juan, the Yaqui, by having accumulated these hordes, after having excited them to throw off the yoke.
Furthermore, the latter had brought the cannon and suggested its employment against the farm building; and Iron Shirt had distinguished himself in all the charges up to the very pickets, harassing the Mexicans till they were no doubt weary from want of rest.
All the tendency of their conversation was towards taunting the one-legged robber chieftain for his backwardness in the attack.
Suddenly the Mexican, who had borne the innuendoes with deep philosophy, as he smoked a cigarette or two, lifted his head, and listening, said:
"I know that step! It is my spy's! Now, perhaps, I shall show you what manner of man is el Manco."
There was a slight exchange of questions and answers between the guards of the tent, and then the three leaders beheld a dark figure's outlines against the sky.
It was a peon, apparently.
"Speak," said Captain Pedrillo, as the Indian bowed low, "we three are one to hear you."
"Your Excellency," began the slave in a low, clear voice, eking out his story with signs, which were clearer to the comprehension of Iron Shirt than his speech, "I have penetrated the farm even to the gardens."
"Ah!" cried the peon leader and the robber in a breath, whilst the Apache's eyes gleamed transiently and gleefully.
"I have found a secret gate in the palisade. One or two men, even mounted ones, would not be remarked, for the watches are worn out by the day's guard. In truth, a mounted man would be thought, once within the corral, one of their officers. Thence, one can ride into the garden where the ladies take the air. I am sure," added he, with ferocity, "that if we had half a dozen of us in their midst, while our brothers attacked the hacienda on all sides, that the defenders would be so distracted by their shrieks and the war whoops that we would master the place in a twinkling."
"You hear?" said the Mexican, complacently. "We might have hammered our fists sore on the gate and made no headway. But thanks to my emissary, Juan—"
"Diego—."
"Diego, then; we can have the cursed proprietors at a disadvantage. He shall lead a small force into the heart of the fortress during this night. Then let the sound of our cannon, hurling its huge balls into the doomed dwelling, be their signal to seize the women enjoying the shade and shelter, and ours to assail the same from every quarter."
The Apache was not enthusiastic, and the peon was suspicious.
"He was a servant there," explained Captain Pedrillo, hastily, noticing how little his agent and his project were approved. "Don Benito had him flogged for some peccadillo, and he has loved him, thirsted to show his love for the family ever since."
The rebel leader grinned at the sarcasm; it opened an old sore.
"That is different," said he. "Diego, you are welcome now; and yet," he went on, "Diego is Indian, yes; peon, yes; but Yaqui, no!"
"It is true, I am not a Yaqui," answered the other, with some pride, "but I am a Mayo. My people hunted over this ground, hither and thither, from the sea to the Aztec's land, from the Smoking Mountain to the Pimas' cornfields; but now, their bow is broken, their gold gilds the spurs of the Spaniard. Diego stands alone; the last of the Mayos is the pointing dog of the Yaquis, the Apaches, and the Foe-to-all-men."
He locked his hands, and, bowing, remained like a statue before the trio.
"Good!" said the Apache, "We are born diverse, but hatred makes us brothers. I will bring a chosen band to the secret gate."
"And I," said the peon leader, "will set my brothers on the alert to attack the farm at every point."
"And I will manage the great gun," said Pedrillo, pleased at how patly things were falling. "Here upon the hill—"
"Out of shot?" sneered Juan. "No! Your Mexicans can manage the cannon. You are the gentleman to handle the ladies with gloves; you, Captain, will accompany the spy."
"But I cannot move out of the saddle."
"But you heard Diego say a mounted man will be taken for one of their own officers—"
"Still—"
"It is well," interrupted Iron Shirt; "my brother the Yaqui prepares to hurl his brothers on the pickets, whilst I and mine await at the gate. The captain will go with the Mayo, and when the big gun is fired, we all set to our work. It is spoken, the council is broken up."
He rose. The Yaqui bowed, accustomed already to yield immediately to the superior ever-free Indian, and the Mexican concealed his disgust at being overruled.
There was a brief silence, during which Diego quitted the tent, though remaining still in view, just outside, apparently regarding the stronghold and not listening to the chiefs.
The storm was fast approaching, for the lightning was visible, and the thunder was borne on gusts which gave a damp feeling, though no rain had fallen yet.
"Just the night for a surprise," remarked the Yaqui, assuming to the best of his ability the air of one experienced in warfare.
"It is good," added the Apache, examining his weapons, conscientiously.
The Mexican looked from one to the other with diminishing hesitation.
"Good or not," said he, abruptly, "I see no harm in our taking precautions."
The Apache paid no attention; he was fine edging his knife on a small piece of Arkansas whetstone which he carried in a satchel at his side among other little tools and his talismans. The Yaqui, however, looked over at the speaker inquiringly.
"I want a few of my men to come with me. They know my ways—I know theirs."
Juan consulted Iron Shirt with a glance and then nodded carelessly.
"Let me have Garcia before me, my alférez."
He stepped to the opening, and blew a silver whistle hanging by a chain of the same metal around his long neck. Presently, the Mexican whom he thus summoned came striding to his commander.
"Stefano," said the latter, loudly enough for the others to hear, "I believe you are devoted to me?"
"I ought to be," was the answer, "for I should have been hanged three months ago but for your honour plucking me out of the calaboose of Concha Village. Since then I have been your trustiest lieutenant, I take it."
"You have. Well, I am going on a forlorn hope, but a brave man thinks nothing of risking his life when the reward is great. I am going almost alone into the hacienda, with our Apache brothers, under the guidance of our faithful peon yonder."
"Ah!" cried the ex-banker, incredulously.
"I shall be in the heart of the fortalice, in the gardens, where the ladies recreate out of the reach of arrows, but not safe from the ball from our cannon. Now, as a gallant gentleman, Stefano, do not, in aiming at the house, fling your ball in among the dames."
"I won't, Captain, all the less likely, as I mean to aim at the building low down. The ball will play prettily with the foundation stone and the don's imported Spanish wines—more the pity."
"Then, if the ladies are safe," began the Mexican, relieved partly of his fears, "there's no more to be said."
"The house is my mark, rest tranquil, your Excellency."
"Very well," sighed Pedrillo, drawing his false leg out of the hole which he had deeply drilled in the earth in his agitation. "I no longer have any uneasiness. Now, let me have six men for my expedition."
"You can have six rogues, who will go anywhere under the leadership of La Chupa—"
"Stay; no, I would rather have your kinsman, Zagal, to be at their head."
"My cousin? This is a grievous slur on a caballero to choose his kinsman as a kind of hostage, but 'tis wartime and we must act like warriors. Zagal shall accompany you, Captain, as you please. Have no fear that I shall scalp him with a cannon shot," said Garcia with a laugh. "He owes me forty odd dollars, to be paid out of our plunder of the hacienda. Your honour is safe next him."
This arrangement completed, the captain had to go forth. He looked to a brace of revolvers in his sword belt, to the sabre that it should play freely, put on aponcho, lined with India-rubber against the rain, and hobbled altogether from the tent. The peon guide awaited him, and lent him his shoulder on his lame side till he had mounted his horse. Already the Indians, to the number of fifty, were in the saddle; they had removed everything of a light colour or that glittered, and had chosen whole-coloured horses with a dark skin.
"Hasten down the hill," said Pedrillo, as his half a dozen rogues galloped up into the troop, "the storm will be on us in ten minutes, confound it! And all nocturnal excursions!"
Indeed, they were hardly out of the hollow, and mounting the slope which gradually brought them to the level of the farmhouse, before they were deluged with rain. Fortunately the lightning was flashing on the other side of the pine forest, where the detachment from the besieged were gladly sheltering themselves, and no glimmer fell upon the cavalcade. The Apaches' bodies cast off the wet like ducks' plumage, whilst the thick blankets of the Mexicans were as serviceable as the chief salteador's waterproof.
The ditch was brimming with water, so much so as to be on the overflow at one or two places where the peons bad wantonly breached it, and the rippling of the waste water was quite noisy. Two of the Indians swam the moat as easily as beavers, plied their hatchets dexterously in the mud till a shelving landing place was formed, and there the troop executed a passage. To ride up to the very stockade, of which the height prevented even a horseman being perceived from the house, though not from a sentinel on the enclosure, was no difficult task.
All remained as gloomy as silent. Beyond doubt, the falling rain had pelted the watchmen into nooks.
Suddenly three figures started up under the very heads of the foremost horses.
"Stay," said Diego, "they are peons. Yaqui?"
"Yaqui!" was the answer.
"What news?"
"Nothing."
"Where is the gate I found, and which I cannot surely lay my hand upon now in the wet?"
"Here."
"This is the gate," said the Mayo Indian, touching the palisades. "See, it moves at a pressure. Now, who comes?"
The captain shuddered, he knew not why, as the secret piece in the stockade yawned ajar.
"We await," said Iron Shirt, laconically, pointing to his followers, who were huddling up against the long wall, and taking advantage of every irregularity in its line.
"You await? Here?" cried the robber, astounded, "You never mean to say you are not going to accompany me now that you see the way is unimpeded?"
"Here we await," replied the Apache, firmly, "till we hear the war cry of the Foe-to-all-Men. When the Legless Man sends up the whoop for reinforcements, the Apaches will dash in and succour him."
"But, chief—"
"The chief has spoken, and his tongue is tired of talk."
"Well, if it is no avail remonstrating with the great warrior," replied Pedrillo, grumbling to himself, "hang him for an obstinate red devil! On, come on," he added, to his own five men and their corporal, as reluctant as himself, on seeing the Apaches leave them to their own valour, and he pushed them before him roughly with his horse's shoulder.
The Mexicans had all dismounted, not having his reason for keeping in the saddle, and noiselessly stole in at the opening after the redskinned pilot.
The little party was within the corral.
"To mark the place of this gate," said the salteador, "two of you remain here."
"Good," said Diego, who pushed the gate shut, whereupon so neatly was it contrived that, particularly in such absence of light, the joining place of the edges was not perceptible.
"Deuce take you—what's that for?" cried the robber, suspiciously.
"Not to arouse observations if a keen eye follows the line of the fences," replied the Mayo. "Your men plainly denote the spot, if we must retreat."
"That is true," rejoined the valiant captain, but not in a tone of assurance, whilst his men looked downhearted at one another, and enviously at the couple left behind.
However, with the Apaches at hand, a retreat without striking a blow would probably have caused a dispute which would have imperilled their unholy alliance; and had as the prospect was, at least the Mexicans might show a fellow countryman quarter, while the Indians would surely not spare the turncoat whites.
After all, so far the smoothness of the entry promised fairly, and to have to do with twenty gentlewomen was no formidable matter.
"On!" said he, impatiently, twitching up his wooden leg so that it seemed to point the way.
They crossed the enclosure, and reached the second wall without a challenge, over a ground eight inches deep in water, in the depressions caused by horses' hoofs, and rude cartwheels.
Diego scrambled up the pickets like a cat. He almost instantly dropped down, and said, in an ordinary tone—
"Not a head along the wall far or near."
"They have drawn in their sentries," said Zagal, a quick-eyed, nimble half-breed, "or they have fallen back under the verandah for protection. It's quite right of them. I would not put a dog out this weather."
"Bah," returned the captain, eager to believe the coast was clear of sharpshooters, and well defended by his waterproof, "war dogs should disregard the rain. As I cannot leap my horse over those pikes, suppose you find the gate."
The Mayo had already groped along the corral, and unexpectedly the gate was opened by him. With a few strokes of his knife he had cut the rawhide thongs that served as fastenings and were relaxed by the wet.
"Let two of you stay here," said Pedrillo, before following the others through.
Then he pushed his horse between the main post and the gate held half open by Diego.
He and his three trusty rogues were before the house, which loomed up large at the end of the long, wide enclosure.
The thunder was dying away, and the swishing of the rain in the puddles and against the palisades seemed lessening in intensity. Certainly, the sentries were removed, and the building was silent as a mausoleum.
Nevertheless, they durst not directly cross the open spaces, but skirted the stockade until they could move forward in the cover of outbuildings which favoured a zigzag advance.
In this manner they attained a brick wall, where Diego halted them with his uplifted hand.
"The garden," he whispered.
By all these movements an hour and a half had elapsed. They were so close to the house that the windows were seen to be outlined here and there by the glow around the edges of the sashes and, through insect protectors of gauze, from subdued lights within.
All seemed asleep.
"We might have taken the hacienda," observed Captain Pedrillo, vexedly. "But those poltroon redskins hung back."
"Nay," replied the Mayo, shaking his head. "They are on their guard within, never fear. There is only one weak point, and that I am showing to your honour."
With his knife, the Indian's tool of all work, he severed the wooden bolt of a door in the wall, and burst it open from a hasp within by a steady pressure of the shoulder. He drew on one side, after pushing it open, in respect. The glimpse within was purely of a black den where wet vines and nodding plants glistened dully of the pouring shower.
"Thank you," said the captain, "for myself and band. But just you go in and scout about first. So far we have done a deed of daring; to run our heads into the wolf's very jaws smacks of rashness."
Diego plunged into the doorway in a cautious manner.
"What do you think of all this, Zagal?" inquired the Mexican chief quickly.
"That we ought to have carried fifty pounds of that blasting powder each man, and we could have blown the hacienda into mud pies! What a chance to miss!"
"Very true," said the captain, pretending to see the venture in the same way. "I wish we had the affair to begin all over again: I should act in a very different way."
In the next instant the Indian reappeared.
"The garden is deserted. Not so much as a horned owl drowned out of its nest," he said.
"Ah!" sighed Pedrillo, like a martyr; "Let us go on. Only one of you remain at this post, his foot in the doorway, holding the door close, but not letting it shut, on his life."
The horseman, the Indian, and the two other Mexicans then invaded the garden. Pedrillo shook with eager heroism so that his steed participated in the tremor. It was a night, and the garden a place to inspire terror, even in the breast least timid, one must grant.
The garden was a maze designed after some labyrinth in a Spanish palace grounds, and rendered more bewildering by the luxuriant growth of the plants and shrubbery chosen to form the intervolutions.
It angered El Manco very much that Zagal would not regard the affair with his own eyes, but persisted in cherishing the plan.
"What a splendid spot for an ambush," said he. "The keenest eye cannot perceive any of us, even your Excellency on the horse's back."
"So be it," answered the captain testily. "Take your nestling places, then, at least till after this clearing-off shower. What a swamping! 'Sdeath of my life! I do not blame the men of don Benito for keeping indoors."
Diego pointed out a species of alcove of verdure into which he backed his horse, equally grateful for shelter in the worst torrent of all that had fallen.
Diego, grinning and showing shark teeth, stood at the mouth of this bay, lashed by the swinging vines and lianas, eyeing the sky and listening attentively to all sounds, quiet as a statue.
After that waterspout, the tempest fled with haste, sweeping away all the gloomy clouds.
Out of the sky of deep blue suddenly sparkled a myriad of stars. The moon, too, presented a pale face in a watery vapour, which gave an effect of mirage as if it had a misty partner and the two were slowly dancing.
The atmosphere became of singular limpidity, and the smallest leaves and the flower cups so tiny that only the hummingbirds' bills could pierce their hollow, were discernible at a distance. Thousands of gnats and mosquitoes swarmed out of their retreats and played in the moonlight like motes in the solar beams. The earth began to smoke with vapour, and the flowers exhaled oppressive wealth of perfumes.
The captain, galvanised by the fresh morning breeze, for it must have been about three o'clock, was about to call his men for a consultation, when on each side of him he felt a figure rise, and in each of his leather cheeks was pressed the muzzle of a pistol. At the same time, his arms were grasped and pressed down by his sides. Another pair of hands seized each leg, real and fictitious, and lifting him up, he was held in the air like a puppet, whilst the traitorous Diego drew the horse out from under him. Then his unknown seizers lowered him to the ground, in the softness of which his stump was deeply embedded, and a low but firm voice muttered in his ear:
"No nonsense, or you are a dead man before being justly hanged!"
Some stifled oaths and cries, at the same time as a scuffle, betokened that his followers were being mastered in the like manner. Only the horrid grating of a knife along a bone, and a deep groan or two proved that Zagal or another had offered such a manful resistance as their captain well heeded not to attempt.
Two men took the salteador between them, bending like a sack of grain, and carried him, heels first, in that ignominious attitude, through the maze, which was no puzzle to them, into the house over the porch and in at a window from the verandah. The room into which he was transported was that where Mr. Gladsden had been entertained. Don Benito, his son, and another gentleman, chiefs of the defensive operations, were there seated. Two lamps, burning low, were quickly turned up on the arrival of the prisoner, evidently expected. His carriers were two Mexicans of strong build, armed to the teeth, who set him in an armchair, confronting their master, and stood, one each side of him, pistols still in hand.
For a moment don Benito and his captive looked at one another. Hatred and anguish at having been thus placed before his old enemy gave the former don Aníbal the impudence not to quail.
"My so-called captain," said the hacendero, "you are my prisoner."
"By the cursedest treachery," returned Pedrillo, bitterly and really burning with indignation.
"Which trick has only prevented you attempting a more shameful deed against women and children of your own race—a race that repudiates such as you, though."
"I am a volunteer frontier guard," rejoined the freelance, still more impudently. "If it were not for my band doing soldierly duty along the border, your houses, your sheep, your cattle, your families would not be safe."
"Trash!" returned don Benito. "You are an ally of the redskin murderers, not their repressor."
"This is the first time I have ever been hand in hand with them," went on Pedrillo, pleading direct to the third Mexican whom he knew to be a rich proprietor. "They have forced me to act with them. When one is among wolves, he must howl with them."
"A wolf howls with wolves, but a dog dies battling with them," retorted señor Bustamente.
Diego entered the room at this juncture.
"Well?" demanded the hacendero.
"One dead with his own knife in his heart; one wounded with a pistol shot which went off in the folds of his blanket, the other safe and sound," reported the false guide.
"This Indian will bear me out that I entered on the mad enterprise reluctantly," began the bandolero in a less firm voice.
"This Indian Diego knows you of old, and I advise you not to require a character from him. In the time when you resumed your old craft of piracy and attacked me in the Gulf, this Indian and his father scuttled your steamer, effectually executing that diversion which prevented your crew from overwhelming my brave friend."
Captain Pedrillo rewarded the Mayo with a malignant look. If he had only have suspected this before when he had him in his camp. Whilst he ground his teeth and jerked his stump nervously, his judge pursued:
"I have had you decoyed out of your forces that the savages may not have the benefit of your cultured cunning. You deserve death a hundredfold for warring against Mexico, and that death should be the traitor's—that by the ignoble rope. But I have no hangman's noose here; you are going to be honoured with the soldier's fate—you shall only be shot!"
"Beware!" said Pedrillo, stoutly, though his heart sank; "This house is surrounded by a multitude like the waves of a sea. When the assault is made for which the signal is the crushing shot of an enormous cannon being levelled hereon under cover of the stormy darkness, you will be inundated by the sands of a desert storm. My murder will be avenged on each of you, your wives, your daughters and your sons and servants, over and over again!"
"Thanks for the caution, but we mean to sell our lives and our dear ones' honour most dearly. Meanwhile, you will be shot. Take the carrion hence to the room where Father Serafino will try to soften his hard heart, and then lead him out to execution."
The cold, stern sentence annihilated the salteador's insolence. His hands dropped and hung each side of the armchair, whilst he murmured in deep terror.
"You have robbed me before of my ship, of my bravest men, and now would have my blood! It is of evil omen to you!"
He trembled, and his eyes seemed to be moistened; clearly his ferocious soul was weakening, and fear had stricken him to the heart. The two peons bore him away between them, like an automatic figure, of which the limbs of flesh and bone were no more vivified than that of wood. In this supine, hopeless state, the priest could in no way prevail on him. Half an hour was entirely wasted in unavailing pleading. Then came the guard to carry out the prostrated miscreant to meet his doom at the dawn of that day when he anticipated he should have the farm at his mercy.
Without resistance, ceasing to tremble but still a weakling, the once dreaded bandit allowed himself to be propped up against the palisade. By the morn's early light his figure, firmly set by his wooden leg being fixed in the wet ground, his back against the wood, his head on one shoulder, his eyes closed, his white lips muttering nothing intelligible, could all be seen by the Indians and his followers upon the other eminence. Thence, too, could be discerned the firing party of peons, five in number, ranged at a few paces, before don Benito, who was to give the word. The miserable aspect of the lame man, like a buzzard with a broken and trailing wing, pitiable despite its loathsomeness, made the Mexican see that he was judicious in not hanging the robber; the sight of the single leg twitching in the death struggle in air would have appealed to humanity, and Pedrillo el Manco would become an exalted legend among the reprobates of the province.
All was ready.
A gleam of sunlight irradiated the corral, and glistened on the wet pickets, and yellowed the waxen face of the wretch condemned to death.
Don Benito looked at the five gun barrels just catching the sunbeam, and was about to give the order for them to fire, when a totally unforeshadowed interposition occurred.
When, during the night, the Apaches at the secret gate had heard the scuffle within the enclosure, which denoted how the Mexicans had fallen on the unfortunate companions of Pedrillo, they were off at full speed without delay, clearing the moat at a tremendous bound. Two of the robbers succeeded in passing through the postern, but were overtaken and cut down on the brink of the ditch. After that, during the trial of Captain Pedrillo, the environs of the hacienda had not been disturbed. At the present moment all eyes within the corral were directed on the culprit so soon to expiate his crimes. Nevertheless, the sentries would not have permitted a numerous body of enemies to have approached unchallenged. But it was another matter as regarded a solitary Apache, who, now hanging by the side of his war pony, now leading it, now crawling on alone before, and whistling softly for it to join him, came up to the palisade totally unseen and unexpected. In fact, how could the two hundred peons and Mexicans in the farm enclosure fear anything from a solitary red man?
Thus had Iron Shirt, for it was the chief who devoted himself to a desperate enterprise, reached the outside of the stockade just where the bullets, sure to perforate the wood around the death-awaiting bandolero, would salute the unsuspected bystander painfully. The woodwork rose some fourteen feet high, effectually masking him and his equally as steadily moving steed. He stopped the latter, vaulted on his back like a circus rider, stood up, and all of a sudden the startled Mexicans beheld the plumed head, the black painted face, and the long arm of the Apache above the pointed posts, just over the cowering bandit's form.
"Fire!" cried don Benito.
But even as he spoke the red arm was extended downwards, the steellike fingers clutched the shoulder of Captain Pedrillo, and he was lifted up with what was a prodigious expenditure of force, albeit he was the lighter by a limb than most men, clear of the low aim of the peons. Then, caught in both arms of the savage, standing on his horse, the Mexican was transferred to the farther side of the barricade.
It was the deed of an instant, this snatching aloof of the victim.
Fifty eager men, shaking off their stupefaction, sprang to the stockade, and leaping upon shelves, placed there for the purpose, fired on the disappearing pony, burdened with the double charge, but gallantly bounding away.
At the same time, to draw off a second volley from their gallant chief, a number of Apaches, and the rebels who ran up the incline as far as the verge of the ditch, shot arrows and bullets into the corral. The Mexicans were compelled to drop down and retire.
True to the chivalric creed that a chief's scalp is to be rescued at any cost, Iron Shirt had saved his brother commander.
With similar fortitude, the American and his associate had resisted the rain in the best shelter the rocks afforded. At least, the relentless downpour had prevented any completion of the mounting of the piece, and it was not till full day, after the Apache chief had triumphantly brought the Mexican back to the encampment, amid thevivasof the rebels, that Garcia's cannoneers had obtained the fitting elevation.
This done, the robber lieutenant applied his cigar, after having puffed it into active incandescence, to the piece of slow match stuck in the rusty touchhole, and embedded there with ample powder to ensure the ignition.
Gladsden gave the hunter an appealing look, but the latter's face was immobile as a statue's. He had, therefore, to control his throbbing heart as best he might, whilst the match spluttered and hissed like a serpent, and lessened in length. All eyes were fastened upon the farmhouse, and the unutterably deep silence which pervaded the thousands of enemies to the beset handful was most impressive.
Hardly had a few seconds, which seemed minutes to all concerned, fled away, than the spark reached the powder; there was a faint flash, then a much brighter and broader one, and with a gush of flame, as at the opening of an iron furnace door, the old gun awoke from its centuries' repose, with the roar of a menagerie lion that was at last released from captivity.
Through the rolling smoke the huge round stone, which had been chosen for bullet, sped noisily in an arc of trajectory which gave señor Stefano much credit, and crashed into the farmhouse a little below the roof edge, knocking three little bits of windows into one broad gap.
An immense shout of savage joy hailed this result, and even the bystanders, injured by the splinters of the logs, smashed by the recoil of the gun, forgot their hurts in the success.
Gladsden had leaned forward out of the covert, and seemed on the verge of seeking to avenge this hurling of death in amid the Mexican's home; but the American placed both hands on his shoulders, and dragged him back and downwards.
"Wait!" said he, grimly. "Before they fire a second ball, our turn to play comes in. They will leave powder round loose, will they? I'll show 'em! You jes' hold your hosses—I'll show 'em to shoot at women and children."
Indeed, there was plenty of time for the planning and execution of a countermeasure, for the remounting of the forty pounder, though cheerfully, even merrily, performed, was a lengthy labour.
Mr. Gladsden, chafing at his impotence, fixed his eyes on the farmhouse, where the great hole seemed to reproach him for this inaction. There did appear at its edges what seemed men at that distance, but the Yaquis immediately showered stones and darts on these repairers, who shortly retired.
The unfortunate victims of the bombardment would have no choice but to put the women in the cellars and perish in the ruins, or sally out at a disadvantage when the cannon rendered the place quite untenable.
In the meantime, Oliver, calculating with much exactitude the time required by the Mexicans and their assistants to replace the gun on its rests, was splitting a length of old pine in halves; this done, he hollowed out the centre with his knife, and soon had a pair of troughs which served very fairly as rocket tubes. As soon as he had finished, his jogging the elbow of the Englishman for him to look, set the latter to comprehend in part the hunter's intention.
He aided him eagerly to lay the rockets in the hollow of the wood, itself supported firmly between the stones, the mouth directed with all the care he would have given a shot on which life depended at the powder canisters.
It is true that several horses and men came between the mark and the two projectiles, but their iron heads would make light of such obstacles, perhaps.
Enthusiastic at the great result of the first discharge, many of the Yaquis swarmed up the slope to see the second discharge more closely, and, spite of orders from the guard of the robber captain, they clustered so as to almost impede the smiling cannoneer in his second essay.
Three of the Apaches on their horses on one side, and half a dozen Mexicans charged them slowly to bear them back. An opening was made thereby, a vista from the two watchers, even to the cannon and its ammunition pile.
"It is the time! Touch off!" whispered Oliver.
The Englishman gave him a fusee out of his cigar lights box, and kindled one himself simultaneously. The two, with one and the same movement, clapped them to the rocket matches, which they had pinched off short, and blew at the flames to accelerate the burning.
Engrossed in the application of the fire to the cannon, none of the enemy heard this slight crepitation, or saw the thin sparks on the barranca's crest.
Almost immediately the match was blazing within each case, and, covering the two whites with a shower of sparks, the rockets, slowly at first, but soon far distancing the initial velocity, traversed the intervening space, and deflecting towards the ground, rushed noisily through the little group of robbers, Apaches, Yaquis and leaders, into the very heap of powder. The explosion occurred, but, not in the least pausing, the rockets continued an erratic flight, ploughing up the ground, ricocheting, separating, crossing and joining, diffusing silver and ruddy golden fireballs, and thus careering among the amazed multitude till the cases fell as blackened coals.
Meanwhile, the powder which was loose had flared up and frightened the horses; then the open tins burst and showered the ground with flaring rain. The full tins went off like bombs, and one of them, dislocating the arrangement of timber under the gun, upset the whole pile. The cannon, of which the match had been uninterruptedly burning, went off whilst thus overturned, and the stone ball, perforating a herd of the Yaquis, split in three pieces, which fell upon the upturned, curious faces of their fellows beneath the hill.
"I'm inclined to b'lieve," remarked Oliver, drawing his revolver, "that the folks on the farm hev' seen our rockets go off at last."
Whilst the smoke was enshrouding the hill top, and the ground still quaking, the mounted men who had not been unsaddled, using both hands to restrain their terrified steeds, and the unhurt savages flying to and fro and against one another in great consternation, the rockets had been truly taken for their signal of action by both the Mexican parties, however far divided.
Out of the wood debouched the mounted Mexicans, shaking their banneretted lances as if they were reeds, and shouting "Mexico forever!" As they came on, well thinned out, their swiftness gave them the appearance of a much more numerous column.
"The soldiers! The soldiers from Ures!" screamed the Yaquis in the hollow. "Look out for yourselves! The lancers are coming!"
On seeing them in confusion, and shrinking back from all sides so as to form a serried mass under the walls of the hacienda, don Benito and don Jorge, each at the head of a troop, dashed out of the corral at the main portal and the secret one, and executed a dreadful double charge to the cry of "Down with the rebels!"
The shock of the pretended lancers and the hacendero's followers on opposite sides of the insurgents' agitated ranks, occasioned a combat; but when the horsemen, with spear or cutlass, were intermingled with the footmen, it became slaughter. Neither side craved for mercy, and they fought as only men can fight who were either masters who feared to lose the upper hand of subjects, or slaves who were seeking reprisals for wrongs inflicted on anterior generations.
Whenever the swaying of the mob brought a mass near the hacienda or its stockade, all the defenders within, to whom were added the women, armed with obsolete firearms, musketry, and blunderbusses, fired upon them, and added not inconsiderably to the dismay and butchery.
In the interval, on the summit of the hill, where the smoke still lingered from the explosions, the salteadores had sought to punish the rocket dischargers, whom they had perceived in the rocks and under the pine stumps. It is true that the Englishman had most imprudently stood up in order to see what really was the extent of the damage done. The Apaches, at a word from Iron Shirt, had descended the hill towards the hacienda, rallying their own comrades preparatory to a prudent drawing off with all the livestock which might be added to their previously collected droves. They considered the battle lost to them on seeing the immovable Yaquis struck with panic, an emotion which extended with marvellous rapidity even to those on the other side of the farm, entirely unaffected by actual danger.
Stunned by the cannon report, a noise too great of its kind to have ever come within their experience, the banditti's horses were found to be unmanageable, and they had alighted, all but their maimed leader, whose steed was less incapable of guidance, to punish the authors of the disaster which had turned the tide.
Three times they made a rush at the natural bulwarks in full belief that they could hurl the paltry opposition over, a-down the ravine; but each time their retreat was marked by a line of corpses. So near a mark was fatal to the heavy thirty-eight calibre repeaters.
"This is the second time you are running agen this snag," taunted the hunter, with that bitter loquacity common to him and Indians in the fever of combat, "but come on agen! Bless you, that's on'y an appetiser to the pie to foller! Thar's roast ribs the next dish! Come and sweep the platter—only two tender chickens left, and plenty of gravy! Do come now, while the offer is open! Did any gentleman say, 'Mercy!' Well, I'm not sparing white skunks today! P'raps you're only drawing our fire—loafing round tell we haven't a cartridge left! Yes, do walk up for a grapple and a hug—we are only the worst kickers you ever seen, that's all."
All this sarcasm was echoed by Pedrillo; his fury was indescribable, to say nothing of the effects of the native brandy which had been given him as a remedy after his prostration under the fear of death. When he recognised the Englishman, all the pent up rage of fifteen years inspired him, and hisabsent legached again as lively as when it had been torn off by the shark. Thegringo, who had sunk his ship, after having run away with his bride and his cruiser; who had taken the treasure which the law of robbers assigned to the captain in good part; this impudent spoilsport again had marred the consummation of vengeance upon his fellow foe, don Benito. He cast all prudence aside; he himself advanced with his surviving men prominently.
"We'll bury them in the dryarroyo!" he yelled, foaming at the mouth, and his wooden leg beating the horse's shoulder in his feverish convulsions. "Down with them."
What was their surprise to see the two men leap disdainfully over their breastwork, and stride towards the eight or ten Mexicans with revolver and knife in hand, spurning the dead and wounded due to the same well-plied weapons.
The bandits slackened their pace, but the mounted leader, still continuing, advanced beyond them. They resumed their charge. But already that separation had resolved Gladsden. Forgetting that he had been enjoined to keep side by side with the American as long as they faced the Rustlers, and, when the chance-medley came, to stand back to back with him, he sprang quickly onward. The now frightened Pedrillo aimed at him a terrible sweeping blow of a long sword, such another as the haplessguitarerohad employed in the tavern. And, though Gladsden parried it partially with his knife, the glancing blade cleft his left shoulder. Stung by the pain, the Englishman dropped the knife out of the hand, already benumbed by the cut, and seizing the protruding wooden leg of the luckless Terror of the Border, applied himself with such extraordinary vigour to tearing the wretch out of the saddle, that leg, man or saddle, was bound to come. It was the leg gave way at its straps, while Pedrillo was howling with agony and clinging to the saddlebow, leaning with all his might contrariwise to the tug. On the unexpected release, the captain fell heavily over the horse and lay senseless on the ground, which he had reached headfirst. Gladsden caught the flying reins, and bounded upon the steed; as it flew forward in fright, two of the salteadores were shouldered aside, and the captain trodden upon by the hinder hoof; but he made no move, never so much as groaned, he had died as much from fright as anguish. This magnificent feat ofarms, if the seizure of the nether limb could be so denominated, completely demoralised the robbers.
But some of the most courageous Yaquis, and an Apache who had lost a kinsman in the explosion as well as a war pony, which he more or less greatly prized, saw the white men victorious and the Rustlers about to fly, with a deeper chagrin and enmity. They collected, by a common impulse, and hemmed in the pair. At their first shot, Gladsden was unhorsed, the animal falling dead under him; had it not reared at the smart of an arrow, the succeeding missiles, which entered its breast, must have riddled the rider. He and the American once more stood together with only that warm carcase as their buckler to some thirty foes.
Neither hugged any delusion as to the future. It was materially impossible that with their cartridges all spent, they could successfully resist so many inveterate foes, who, too, would, at any moment, be reinforced without stint from the Yaquis on the hill.
Indeed, thereupon commenced, with the rush of the Indians, one of those unequal contests which are common on the border, and which, when a worthy poet shall arise, will show posterity at what a waste of gallant hearts civilisation has executed its conquests.
Mute, sombre, back to back so closely that the penetrating lance would have spitted the pair, never recoiling so much as a hand's breadth, plying the hunting knife for the one, and the sword of Pedrillo in his victor's grasp for the other, the unflinching couple, like a Janus animated, held out against the ever-onsetting foe.
Any other enemies must have been impressed with admiration.
Their bared arms were hacked and slit; the left of Gladsden hung disabled; but, on that side, Oliver's formidable right hand was performing miracles of valour and dexterity enough for both. They streamed with blood, which matted their locks and soaked their clothes, dangling in tatters through which their fair skin momently gleamed in glaring contrast with that of their dusky foes until dyed ruddy like the rest.
"How goes it, pard.?" queried Oliver, in a kind of lull in the rain of cuts, and blows, and thrusts which nothing but the very frenzy of the Indians, each to deal the stroke, prevented being fatal a hundred times. "I'm gitting my second wind myself and can go on carving till morning!"
There was no response to the jest; but the Oregonian felt the firm body that had been ever so long a rock of support, slowly weighing upon him. Then, alarmed for the very first time, or rather instantly inspired with sympathy and wild indignation at the injustice of so brave a man succumbing under the blows of such ignoble creatures, he lifted his voice as an appeal to the rectifier of such abuses, in his restricted mind:
"Cuss ye, for a heap of dirty niggers!" he vociferated. "Six at a time we'd have butchered you up harnsum! Whoop-ho! Will no one of the colour of a white man let us have ten minutes to recruit; when we'll thrash them all agen, honest Injin!"
A deep, hoarse laugh at the speech, not at all understood, was the reply.
But a cry of terror was elsewhere audible.
"Something's coming, mycahooter(partner)," said Oliver, redoubling his gigantic sweeps of the buffalo-butchering knife. "And never more was a friend welcome! Don't you lose your grip yet!"
Indeed, without being able to discern the features of the knot of combatants on the hill, under the blue canopy of floating smoke, all silent since the two whites had exhausted their ammunition, and the close ring of their assailants forbade their employing firearms, don Benito and his son, with a score of best riders, had taken the cow path and somehow climbed the incline. Coming upon the crest at a little distance from the barranca, they formed column, four abreast, and raced to the spot of the hand-to-hand struggle.
"Viva Mexico!" was their continuous war cry, with the ancient "Rally around Spain!"
"Oh,vivaanything in the way of a 'Co,'" muttered Oliver, receiving his spent and insensible friend on his arm, and depositing him behind the horse's body at his feet. "You're like the sogers, you've come when the Injins took the scalps."
Happily the attackers turned at this fresh incident.
Opening out so as to allow the hind ranks to rush forward and form a line with the rest, the cavalry fell upon the Indians, and sabred them in the first dash past. As soon as they could wheel, which was done on the edge of the barranca by sharp reining in and spinning round whilst the horse's fore hoofs were in air, they returned at full speed. But, already, the Yaquis had renounced their wish to finish with the two whites and fled, flinging away their weapons not to encumber their flight.
Alone, wounded, but stubborn, the Apache kneeling, took aim with his envenomed hatchet at the head of Oregon Oliver, intending to cast it ere he should be trampled under the Mexicans. The hunter could do nothing, his brain swam, his eyes closed with their last vision comprising the exultant visage of the malicious red man; his knife slipped out of his gore-smeared and stiffening hand; he reeled, and then, like a giant pine uprooted by a "norther," fell upon the body of his comrade as if to be his shield to the very last. There was just a moan, like a puma's that had defended its cub to the death.
At the same instant, the tomahawk whizzed forward and would have infallibly fleshed itself in him ere he finally rested; but Benito had buried his spurs in his steed, which took a prodigious leap. The hatchet gashed the Mexican's leg, even as he stooped forward and drove his reeking blade to the cross hilt in the bosom of the redskin.
Don Jorge dismounted, and hastened to lift up the two white men, one after the other, and force some brandy down their throats. Meanwhile two of their friends had ridden after his father, who was seen to have lost control of his steed.
A silence fell on the hill, broken only by moans of the wounded and calls for water.
All at once there rose a loud cheering at the farmhouse; on its roof the ladies had collected and were waving scarves and veils. And, as an explanation, there was shortly wafted over the valley the music of a cavalry band, strong in brass and kettledrum, playing a livelyArragonese jota. The gay notes grated on the nerves of the Mexicans on the hill, collected round the sad group of the two whites and don Benito, whom they had assisted off his horse.
"The dragoons from the town," observed one of the party. "That crowns the day. In an hour there will not be one Yaqui within view of a telescope."
In fact, the valley was already strewn with plunder, and the dead and the wounded not capable of flight, but of living Indians hardly a hundred. The revolt was over. Then the field was again animated after this transient desertion, for Father Serafino, with peons carrying handbarrows, came forth to attend to the wounded. Upon improvised litters of lances, the European, Oliver, and Benito, all mute and quiet for want of strength, were tenderly transported down the hill and up into the hacienda hall.
The little hero of the Angelito was displaced from his throne, the decorations removed, and the room became a hospital. The ladies had assumed a simple dress befitting their suddenly imposed duty, and were obeying the orders of the father, who had a knowledge of surgery, like all missionaries.