"Go back, señor," he cried to Will: "you will be in danger."
"Not a bit of it," replied Will, in the grip of intense excitement.
He ran along beside the Colonel, wishing that he had had the forethought to borrow a rifle before he left the Jefe. He did not pause to consider that he was properly a non-combatant; he was in fact too much excited to think of his own position at all.
The head of the little column soon came in view of a large plaza, so full of smoke that it was impossible to see whether the men firing were friends or foes. But in a few moments Will caught sight of a number of Indians, wearing green feathers, swarming out of one of the streets opening on the plaza.
"They are General Carabaño's bloodhounds," cried Will.
With a great shout the men sprang impetuously forward. Behind the Indians Will saw General Carabaño's towering form. He was evidently taken by surprise at the sudden appearance of a force from an unexpected quarter; but he called to his men to swing round, and with wild cries, in no order, Indians and Venezuelans charged straight for the head of the column. There was no time to fire. The two bodies came together with a shock, and then began a desperate hand to hand fight in which bayonets, clubbed rifles, lances, machetes, swords, revolvers, all played a part.
Will began to wish he had not been so impetuous. He was in the thick of it now, pressed upon so closely that it was impossible to escape from the mellay. For some minutes he dodged this way and that, with no other thought than to avoid the enemy's weapons. He was in some measure protected by the very denseness of the struggling mass, which was jammed so tight that there was little room for wielding arms of any kind. But presently, as the swaying throng thinned a little, a furious llanero lunged at him with his bayonet. It shaved his shoulder almost by a hair's-breadth, only missing his chest because the man stumbled over one of Blanco's soldiers who had just fallen. Will's blood was up. Before the llanero recovered his footing, Will let drive at him with his right fist, at the same time gripping his rifle by the barrel with the left. A vigorous wrench forced it from the man's hand. Will had just time to change it to his right hand when two yelling Indians sprang at him with machetes. He parried the stroke of one, catching it on the barrel, and dropped on his knee, in the nick of time to evade a sweeping blow from the weapon of the other, which shaved the top clean off his sun-helmet.