"Woman, you lie," he said, striving to rise. "I will help my brothers."
"Your brothers are being slaughtered; did you not mean to kill my father, my affianced husband, and myself? Die, villain! Die by a woman's hand! I love Don Sylvio—do you hear me?—And I am avenged."
"Woe, woe!" Nocobotha shrieked, dragging himself on his knees to the edge of the platform, "I am the murderer of a people I wished to save."
The Indians fell like ripe corn before the sickle of the reapers. It was no longer a combat, but a butchery. Several chiefs flying before Pedrito the capataz and Don Sylvio rushed to the platform as a last refuge.
"Oh!" Nocobotha howled, as he took a tiger bound and seized Don Sylvio by the throat, "I too will revenge myself."
There was a moment of terrible anxiety.
"No," the chief added, letting loose his enemy and falling back; "it would be cowardly, for this man has done me no injury."
Doña Concha, on hearing these words, could not restrain tears of admiration, tardy tears; tears of repentance, or of love, perhaps!
Pedrito fired his rifle into the chest of the chief, who was lying stretched out at his feet. At the same instant Pincheira fell, his head cleft asunder by Don Sylvio. Don Valentine struck by a straggling bullet, sank into his disconsolate daughter's arms.
"My God," Nocobotha murmured, "you will judge me!" He locked up to heaven, moved his lips again as if in prayer, and suddenly his countenance became radiant; he fell back and expired.