Then we started the charge, led really by Thornton, who, active as a goat, would have raced straight into the downpour of lead if I had not continually restrained him. Three would scramble up fifteen or twenty feet, and then drop behind boulders, while the other three kept up a heavy fire on the summit; and then the rear rank would advance to a line with their position, while they shelled the enemy. All the time a rain of bullets was splashing on the rocks all about us, but luckily for us they did not expose themselves enough to deliver an accurate fire.
After we had made five or six such rushes, and were about half-way up, we could hear the voices of what sounded like the larger part of the band receding. Supposing they were swinging for the two side walls to flank us we doubled our speed and presently dropped beneath the shelter of a wall of rock about four feet high, from behind which our enemy had been firing.
Two or three minutes earlier their fire had ceased, and what to make of it we did not know. We found that an exposure of our hats on our gun-muzzles drew no fire; yet, driven by sheer desperation, and expecting that every man of us would get shot full of holes, we simultaneously sprang over the rock, and dropped flat on the summit—amid utter silence, about the most happily surprised lot of men in all Mexico! The enemy had decamped. But where? And with what purpose? And why had they not flanked us!
Careful scouting soon showed they had retired in a body down the trail we must follow to reach Musquiz, as for nearly three miles the descent was as rough and difficult as the ascent had been.
Leaving Cress, who was ill, and Manuel, who was weak from loss of blood, to hold the summit, the rest of us descended to fetch up our horses, and a hard hour's job we had of it, for we packed on our backs the load of the dead pack horse and those of his mates the last half of the ascent, rather than risk losing another animal.
Upon our return we found Manuel gloating over three trophies—a hat shot through the side by a ball that had evidently "creased" the wearer's head, an old Spanish spur and a gun scabbard—which he seemed to find salve for the burning wound in his side.
Beneath us to the north lay Musquiz, in plain sight, a scant six miles distance. In the clear dry air of the hills, it looked so near that a good running jump might land one in the plaza, and yet none of us expected we all should enter it again. The odds were against it, for below us lay three miles of hill trail any step down which might land us in a worse ambush than the last and we never imagined the enemy would fail to engage us again. But the descent had to be made, and down it we started, Cress and Manuel bringing up the rear with the horses, the rest of us scouting ahead, dodging from rock to tree, advancing slowly, expecting a volley, but receiving none.
For a mile the band followed the trail, and we followed their fresh tracks; then they left the trail and turned west through the timber. However, we never abated our watchfulness until well out of the hills and near the outskirts of the town, which we reached shortly after noon. There, breakfasting generously if not comfortably with Don Abran and his gamecocks, I got news that made me less regretful of my failure to obtain the Santa Rosa Ranch: one of its two Scotch purchasers had been killed two days before my return, in attempting to repel a raid on his camp by Nicanor Rascon!
With Cress too ill to travel, the next morning I left Crawford to care for him, bade farewell to good old Don Abran, and started for Lampasos with Thornton and Curly.
We nooned at Santa Cruz, a big sheep ranch midway between Musquiz and Progreso, leaving there about two o'clock. An hour later, we heard behind us a clatter of racing hoofs, and presently were overtaken by a hatless Mexican, riding bareback at top speed, who told us that shortly after our departure the Lipans had raided Santa Cruz, and that of its twelve inhabitants, men, women and children, he was the only survivor. Thus were the Lipans still levying heavy toll for their wrongs!