| 'But little kenned they Jenny's mettle, Or dreamt what lay in Jenny's kettle.' |
With eyes that seemed to flash living fire, her grey hair streaming over her shoulders, she must have looked a perfect fury as she rushed out and deluged the up-turned faces and shoulders of the savages with the boiling mess. They dropped yelling to the ground, and Jenny at once turned her attention to the back door of the van, where already one of the leading Gaucho malos—aunt's beautiful blackguards of the day before—had gained footing. This villain she fairly bonneted with the saucepan.
'Your brithers have gotten the big half o' the kail,' she cried, 'and ye can claw the pat.'
It was not till next evening that aunt told Moncrieff the brave part old Jenny had played. He smiled in his quiet way as he patted his mother's hand.
'Just as I told ye, Miss M'Crimman,' he said; 'mither's a marrrvel!'
But where had the bold Bombazo been during the conflict? Sword and revolver in hand, in the foremost ranks, and wherever the battle raged the fiercest? Nay, reader, nay. The stern truth remains to be told. During all the terrible tulzie Bombazo had never once been either seen or heard. Nor could he be anywhere found after the fight, nor even after the camp was struck, though search was made for him high and low.
Some one suggested that he might have been overcome by fear, and might have hidden himself. Moncrieff looked incredulous. What! the bold Bombazo be afraid—the hero of a hundred fights, the slayer of lions, the terror of the redskins, the brave hunter of pampas and prairie? 140 Captain Rodrigo de Bombazo hide himself? Yet where could he be? Among the slain? No. Taken prisoner? Alas! for the noble redman. Those who had escaped would hardly have thought of taking prisoners. Bombazo's name was shouted, the wood was searched, the waggons overhauled, not a stone was left unturned, figuratively speaking, yet all in vain.
But, wonderful to relate, what men failed to do a dog accomplished. An honest collie found Bombazo—actually scraped him up out of the sand, where he lay buried, with his head in a tussock of grass. It would be unfair to judge him too harshly, wrong not to listen to his vouchsafed explanation; yet, sooth to say, to this very day I believe the little man had hidden himself after the manner of the armadillos.
'Where is my sword?' he shouted, staggering to his feet. 'Where is the foe?'
The Scotchmen and even the Gauchos laughed in his face. He turned from them scornfully on his heel and addressed Moncrieff.