“I am going back to get in your cart,” said he. “That will probably be where they’ll head in.”
Apparently he did not hear her speak again.
Under Griswold’s military orders now, two long curving lines of soldiers and trail men were spread out, leaving a wide opening at the end where the attack was to be expected. The orders were that each man was to lie flat in the grass and not to fire until the invaders were well inside the lines.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed, a half hour. The herd still slept well. The riders, duly warned, kept up their crooning. The embers of the fire smoldered.
Suddenly the strain of vigilance was broken. The night air was rent by the shrill yell of the Comanche war whoop!
It was no war cry of the attacking party. It was only the devilish fashion that old Yellow Hand, close guarded, had chosen to appraise approaching invaders of his own presence and of his defiance of the men who held him captive. Whatever he expected to gain by his bravado, the wily old Iago got quick results in a swinging blow at the side of his head from a cavalry carbine which laid him out for the rest of the fight.
The fight, of course, was on at once; the keen ears of the savage had detected the presence of the enemy between the two lines of guards. The night went alight in slanting streaks of rifle fire. There was general mêlée. The Del Sol men and the troopers could make out little, except that their enemy was between the jaws of the trap that had been set for them.
One man of the assailants, unsuspected, had crawled close to the cart where Taisie Lockhart had slept. When the yell of the reckless savage broke the air—followed by the general rattle of musketry—there came the roar of the startled herd once more stampeding in the night. No cattle could stand under this. In this increase of the confusion the crawling invader arose and made a rush toward the cart. There came two red flashes from the front flap. The man fell forward and lay motionless. For a second time Rudabaugh had failed to get his coveted title to uncounted Texas acres. At the same hands, another of his boldest men had fallen.
From the rear of the cook cart came the roar of a Sharpe Berdan. Cinquo had gone into action.
“I got him! I got one!”