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 hapless _guitarero_ had 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 of _arms_, 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.