Don Manuel had beheld with horror this outbreak of Indian fury. Springing forward he shouted to the patriots, in a loud voice, to desist.
"Death to the traitor!" cried the Spanish commandant, who was still fighting desperately at the head of the remnant of his squadron. "_Muera!_" repeated he, as he fired off his last pistol at Manuel. He missed him, and had just raised his sabre to repair the badness of his aim, when a blow from a club brought horse and rider to the ground.
"Hold your hands!" cried the young nobleman. "Hold, and give quarter!"
"_El tiempo de la mansedumbre se ha pasado!_" muttered Jago and his Indians. "The day of mercy is long gone by."
"By the eternal God, I will split the skull of the first who strikes another blow!" shouted Manuel.
But his endeavours to suspend the slaughter were fruitless. His voice was drowned amid the furious yells of the Indians. At that very moment the vesper bells from Cholula came sounding up the mountain, and those of the various villages of the plain chimed in with an indescribably peaceful and soothing harmony.
"Ave Maria!" exclaimed a hundred Indian voices. "Ave Maria!" repeated Metises and Zambos; and all, friends and foes, let their blood-dripping hands sink, and bending their wild, excited gaze upon the earth, clasped and kissed the medals of the Virgin of Guadalupe which were hung round their necks, and in tones of musical monotony began to pray--"Ave Maria, audi nos peccadores!" All heads were bowed, all hands folded; and, kneeling upon the corpses of the slain, these raging foes implored, in humble formula, forgiveness for themselves and their erring fellow-creatures.
The shades of evening had spread themselves over valley and plain; in the barranca it was already darkest night; but the mountains of the Sierra Madre still glowed in the red rays of the setting sun, their snow-capped summits flaming aloft like gigantic beacons. At the same time multitudes of eagles and vultures rose upon the wing, mingling their screams with the groans of the dying and the agonized cries of the wounded. Every circumstance seemed to unite to render the scene in the highest degree sublime and horrible.
The bells ceased ringing, and scarcely had the echoes of their last chime died away, when the Indians arose from their devotional posture, gazed at each other for a moment with lowering and significant glances, and then, without uttering a word, sprang upon the few remaining dragoons with an eager rage and greed of blood, that scarcely seemed human. In a few seconds not one of the Spaniards was left alive. To a man they had been stabbed and strangled by their inveterate and unappeasable foes.