Meanwhile, not having the reasons for a halt that had checked the Mexicans in the very commencement of a charge, the cattle infuriated with the falling sparks from the wood beginning to become detached from their horns, and blinded with the smarting smoke, tore down the incline into the very vale where the Yaquis were crowded. Certainly their onset would create a consternation, preventing any attention being bestowed upon Oliver's little party, as it obeyed his earnest injunction and wheeled off into an island of trees.
In ten minutes, as the dawn grew upon the scene, they could very well discern, boldly emerging from the piney woods, not only some of the stragglers of the column the Mexicans had discomfited, but two bodies of mounted men, together over their own number, whom Oliver recognised as the Apaches and the banditti, whom they had left at daggers drawn, or, more exactly, at long shots with each other.
To explain this unparalleled occurrence in border records, the union of two hostile forces in brotherly ties for active operation, we must turn back a few pages.
Behind the fugitives, the rattle of dropping shots had gone on for an hour so that Oregon Oliver's prophecy of the possible duration of such skirmishing bid fair to be verified.
The Indians mode of warfare is to force a retrograde movement by the gradual concentration of fire, and at the moment a retreat is begun, whatever the cause--strategetic or from pure weakness or cowardice--a charge is made by the best warriors in a body, whooping and brandishing their weapons.
Knowing something of how resistless was such a rush, our old acquaintance Don Aníbal, _alias_ The Slayer of Seven, was in no humour for awaiting one. Already, from the glimpse he had of the young Mexican girl borne away among the stampeded horses, his desire for retaliation on don Benito had inspired him with a novel idea; he hoped, against all precedent, to unite the Apaches with him in the same purpose.
It was, indeed, our old acquaintance, the reader will see, perfectly unscrupulous by what means he obtained his ends.
The miracle to which he owed the preservation of his rascally life had been a lesson only for the time being.
When, plunging off the islet into the Gulf in order to elude the infuriated husband of doña Dolores, the pirate was swimming for an offing, he became the aim of more than one shark. Twice he escaped being swallowed more or less in the maw of the most swift, for each time he had swerved on one side as it blindly turned back downward for the terrible bite. But, when so near the shore as to hope for full immunity from this living danger at least, one of the tintoreras, fearless of the shoaling water, flew forward like a flash of lightning, and, amid an eddy of the churning water, poor Matasiete was seized by the leg, and suffered the anguish of its being torn from half the thigh. His scream was stifled as he was dragged down, and when he arose, he was cast upon the strand. With the strength of infernal pain and the madness of despair he not only dragged himself up under cover of the mangroves, but twisted his cravat as a tourniquet around the severed limb. Then he fainted away.