It was no battle; it was a fearful butchery. Several of the chiefs, flying before Don Fernando, Luciano, and Don Estevan, threw themselves upon the stage as a last place of refuge.
"Ha!" shouted Don Torribio, with a bound like a jaguar, seizing Don Fernando by the throat; "At least I shall not die unavenged." A moment of terrible anxiety ensued. "No," he continued, quitting his grasp on his foe, and falling backwards, "it would be the act of a coward. My life belongs to this man; he won it from me."
The bystanders could not repress a cry of admiration. Don Fernando coolly raised his rifle to his shoulder, and discharged its contents point-blank into the breast of the man stretched at his feet.
"Thus perish all traitors!" he cried.
"Great God!" freely exclaimed Don Torribio, by a supreme effort rising to his knees, and looking up to heaven with an expression of sublime hope irradiating his features,—"Great God, I thank Thee! Thou hast forgiven me!" One last smile of unutterable happiness glided over his face; he fell back and expired.
Meanwhile Doña Hermosa had disappeared. When the Tigercat, who had been fighting like a lion in the midst of the fray, perceived that all was lost, and nothing but flight could save him from the fate to which the Mexicans had doomed him, should he fall into their hands, he rallied around him a handful of his bravest warriors, seized Doña Hermosa, regardless of her cries and prayers, threw her across his saddle, spurred his horse into the thickest of the mêlée, cut his passage through, and, followed by his faithful braves, succeeded in getting out of the town and gaining the prairie.
It was too late for pursuit when the Mexicans became aware of his flight; the old freebooter was already beyond their reach, carrying his prey with him, like an eagle bearing a lamb in his talons.
[1] Literally, milk from a pall; poison.