"So thar ain't no 'casion to thank me for the promise which I give not to interfere. Fair play's a jewel, and you kin wear in your ear all the jewel you'll win in this hyar tussle."
The Apache wasted no breath in a rejoinder. His lips were parted only for a smile, the set grin of a man who had no hope but to inflict all the pain he could on an antagonist before he met his inevitable death. He had on his mind not only the recent striking down of his aids, but the death of others in the past and on the Sonoran plains, due to the American who had shown himself to the Apache caravan only, it was now clear, to draw off a detachment. Like the red man his hatred was insatiable, even that slaughter in which he had distinguished himself seemed no way to wipe out the final collapse on the heap of slain. But for don Benito, Oliver would have been "rubbed out!" The thought was intolerable, and, we see, all alone, he had devoted himself to harassing the Indians in their retreat, and lured away the chief. The scalp of so renowned a hunter would have been a more magnificent trophy than the herd of cattle, to show in the Apache town when the old fathers should demand their lost sons.
Meanwhile, the two men were facing one another, broadsword in hand.
For his age Jorge was endowed with unwonted powers, but his frame had not fully set, and he had an antagonist whose vigour surpassed the common, too. Nevertheless, the Mexican was not dismayed, and the hunter took care not to betray any apprehension he felt as to the result of the terrible duel. If Jorge smiled, it was because he relied on his skill and agility. On the farm he had joined in all the wrestling and knife play of the Vaqueros, and Old Silvano had passed him as a pupil to whom there was nothing more he could teach. Therefore, the youth, gifted with lofty courage and unalterable coolness, believed himself capable of struggling with advantage.
As a kind of chivalrous signal, the Indian slapped his shield resonantly.
They mutually advanced till their forward feet almost touched. For a moment their blades clashed and then the red man, shouting with savage joy, delivered a terrific cut. But the air alone was severed, the agile Mexican having shifted his position with great celerity. Their first encounter was merely a test of one another's style, on which would be founded the passage of arms itself. They fell to it anew, but this time also, don Jorge showed incredible quickness; he eluded the blows, parried them or fenced them off with all that dexterity which a Mexican should exhibit in the management of a weapon which is to him what the _navaja_ is to the Spanish peasant. With giddy rapidity he spun round the savage; and when he got a cut in, as the phraseology of such sport has it, it was a telling one. The shield, however tough the buffalo hide, could not long resist such hearty strokes; sliced off into tissue thinness, cleft, gaping wider and wider with its own tension, Iron Shirt suddenly cast it at the young man to bewilder him and at the same time darted forward. But the Mexican, who uses his blanket sometimes in just the same way as a blind, is taught to keep his eyes on his opponent's, and the ferocious gleam in the Apache's had warned him; he received the charge firmly; parried the cut with excellent precision, though the rush brought the two heaving breasts in contact, and as the Indian receded, lest he should be grappled, he struck in turn. The blow, from the handle turning in the grasp a little paralysed by the late ward, came flat on the savage's shoulder and, diverted upwards, removed his car as clean as if done by a surgeon. Iron Shirt yelled with fury.