THE COMBAT.
Red Cedar's camp was plunged in silence; all were asleep, save three or
four gambusinos who watched over the safety of their comrades, and two
persons who, carelessly reclining before a tent erected in the centre of
the camp, were conversing in a low voice. They were Red Cedar and Fray
Ambrosio.
The squatter seemed suffering from considerable anxiety; with his eye
fixed on space, he seemed to be sounding the darkness and guessing the
secrets which the night that surrounded him bore in its bosom.
"Gossip," the monk said, "do you believe that we have succeeded in
hiding our trail from the white hunters?"
"Those villains are dogs at whom I laugh; my wife would suffice to drive
them away with a whip," Red Cedar replied, disdainfully; "I know all the
windings of the prairie, and have acted for the best."
"Then, we are at length freed from our enemies," the monk said, with a
sigh of relief.
"Yes, gossip," the squatter remarked with a grin; "now you can sleep
calmly."
"Ah," said the monk, "all the better."
At this moment, a bullet whistled over the Spaniard's head, and
flattened against one of the tent poles.
"Malediction!" the squatter yelled, as he sprang up; "those mad wolves
again. To arms, lads; here are the redskins."
Within a few seconds, all the gambusinos were alert and ambuscaded
behind the bales that formed the wall of the camp. At the same moment,
fearful yells, followed by a terrible discharge, burst forth from the
prairie.
The squatter's band comprised about twenty resolute men, with the
pirates he had enlisted. The gambusinos did not let themselves be
terrified; they replied by a point-blank discharge at a numerous band
of horsemen galloping at full speed on the camp. The Indians rode in
every direction, uttering ferocious yells, and brandishing burning
torches which they constantly hurled into the camp.
The Indians, as a general rule, only attack their enemies by surprise;
when they have no other object in view but pillage, as soon as they are
discovered and meet with a vigorous resistance, they cease a combat
which has become objectless to them. But on this occasion the redskins
seemed to have given up their ordinary tactics, so obstinately did they
assail the gambusino intrenchments; frequently repulsed, they returned
with renewed ardour, fighting in the open and trying to crush their
enemies by their numbers.
Red Cedar, terrified by the duration of a combat in which his bravest
comrades had perished, resolved to attempt a final effort, and conquer
the Indians by daring and temerity. By a signal he collected his three
sons around him, with Andrés Garote and Fray Ambrosio; but the Indians
did not leave them the time to carry out the plan they had formed; they
returned to the charge with incredible fury, and a cloud of incendiary
arrows and lighted torches fell on the camp from all sides at once.
The fire added its horrors to those of the combat, and ere long the camp
was a burning fiery furnace. The redskins, cleverly profiting by the
disorder the fire caused among the gambusinos, escaladed the bales,
invaded the camp, rushed on the whites, and a hand-to-hand fight
commenced. In spite of their courage and skill in the use of arms, the
gambusinos were overwhelmed by the masses of their enemies; a few
minutes longer, and all would be over with Red Cedar's band.
The squatter resolved to make a supreme effort to save the few men still
left him; taking Fray Ambrosio aside, who, since the beginning the
action, had constantly fought by his side, he explained his intentions
to him; and when he felt that the monk would certainly carry out his
plans, he rushed with incredible fury into the thickest of the fight,
and felling or stabbing the redskins who stood in his way, succeeded in
entering the tent.
Doña Clara, with her head stretched forward, seemed to be anxiously
listening to the noises outside. Two paces from her, the squatter's wife
was dying; a bullet had passed through her skull. On seeing Red Cedar,
the maiden folded her arms on her bosom, and wailed.
"_Voto a Dios!_" the brigand exclaimed. "She is still here. Follow me,
señora, we must be off."
"No," the Spaniard answered, resolutely. "I will not go."
"Come, child, obey; do not oblige me to employ violence; time is
precious."
"I will not go, I tell you," the maiden repeated.
"For the last time, will you follow me--yes or no?"
Doña Clara shrugged her shoulders. The squatter saw that any discussion
was useless, and he must settle the question by force; so, leaping over
the corpse of his wife, he tried to seize the girl. But the latter, who
had watched all his movements, bounded like a startled fawn, drew a
dagger from her breast, and with flashing eye, quivering nostrils, and
trembling lips, she prepared to go through a desperate struggle.
There must be an end of this, so the squatter raised his sabre, and with
the flat dealt such a terrible blow on the girl's delicate arm, that she
let the dagger fall, and uttered a shriek of pain. But the unhappy girl
stooped at once to pick up her weapon with her left hand; Red Cedar took
advantage of this movement, bounded upon her, and made her a girdle of
his powerful arms. The maiden, who had hitherto resisted in silence,
shrieked with all the energy of despair--
"Help, Shaw, help!"
"Ah!" Red Cedar howled; "he, then, was the traitor! Let him come, if he
dare."
And, raising the girl in his arms, he ran toward the entrance of the
hut, but he fell back suddenly, with a ghastly oath: a man barred his
passage, and that man was Valentine.
"Ah, ah!" the hunter said, with a sarcastic smile; "There you are again,
Red Cedar. _Caray_, my master, you seem in a hurry."
"Let me pass," the squatter yelled, as he cocked a pistol.
"Pass?" Valentine repeated, with a laugh, while carefully watching the
bandit's movements. "You are in a great haste to leave our company.
Come, no threats, or I kill you like a dog."
"I shall kill you, villain," Red Cedar exclaimed, pulling with a
convulsive movement the trigger of the pistol.
But, although the squatter had been so quick, Valentine was not less so;
he stooped smartly to escape the bullet, which did not strike him, and
raised his rifle, but did not dare fire, for Red Cedar had fallen back
to the end of the tent, and employed the maiden as a buckler. At the
sound of the shot Valentine's comrades hurried up to the tent, which was
simultaneously invaded by the Indians.
The few gambusinos who survived their companions, about seven or eight,
whom Fray Ambrosio had collected by the squatter's orders, guessing what
was occurring, and desiring to aid their chief, crept stealthily up, and
seizing the tent ropes, cut them all at once.
The mass of canvas, no longer supported, fell in, burying and dragging
down with it all who were beneath it. There was a moment of terrible
confusion among the Indians and hunters, which Red Cedar cleverly
employed to step out of the tent and mount a horse Fray Ambrosio held in
readiness for him. But, at the moment he was going to dash off, Shaw
barred his passage.
"Stop, father," he shouted, as he boldly seized the bridle, "give me
that girl."
"Back, villain, back," the squatter howled, grinding his teeth; "back!"
"You shall not pass," Shaw continued. "Give me Doña Clara!"
Red Cedar felt that he was lost: Valentine, Don Miguel, and their
comrades, at length freed from the tent, were hurrying up at full speed.
"Wretch!" he exclaimed.
And, making his horse bound, he cut his son down with his sabre. The
witnesses uttered a cry of horror, while the gambusinos, starting at
full speed, passed like a whirlwind through the dense mass of foes.
"Oh!" Don Miguel shrieked, "I will save my daughter."
And leaping on a horse, he rushed in pursuit of the bandits; the hunters
and Indians, leaving the burning camp to a few plunderers, also started
after them. But suddenly an incomprehensible thing occurred: a terrible,
superhuman noise was heard; the horses, going at full speed, stopped,
neighing with terror; and the pirates, hunters, and redskins,
instinctively raising their eyes to Heaven, could not restrain a cry of
horror.
"Oh!" Red Cedar shouted, with an accent of rage impossible to render; "I
will escape in spite of Heaven and Hell!"
And he buried his spurs in his horse's flanks; the animal gave vent to a
snort of agony, but remained motionless.
"My daughter, my daughter!" Don Miguel shouted, striving in vain to
reach the Pirate.
"Come and take her, dog," the bandit yelled; "I will only give her to
you dead."