The scouts came galloping in one after the other, to report to the governor the approach of the enemy, who, according to their calculations, would reach the presidio of San Lucar that same night.
The masses of Indians increased every moment. Their hordes covered the open; they marched with inconceivable rapidity, and seemed to concentrate all their forces on the luckless pueblo.
The governor ordered the three alarm-guns to be fired. Immediately one saw the poor rancheros (cottagers) of the plain trooping in crowds into the town, bringing with them their cattle and furniture, and shedding tears of rage and despair at the sight of their harvests blazing in all directions.
The poor men encamped as they best could in the squares of the pueblo; and after sending their women and children into the fort, all able to bear arms rushed to the barricades, resolved to make those pay dearly who had been the cause of their ruin.
Terror and consternation reigned throughout the town: nothing was heard but sighs and lamentation; and night came, to add horror to the situation by enveloping the earth in darkness.
Strong patrols paraded the streets incessantly; and at times hardy vaqueros, gliding like serpents through the obscurity, ventured two or three hundred paces from the walls, to assure themselves that no immediate danger threatened the presidio.
Things remained in this state till about two in the morning, when, in the midst of the mournful silence brooding over the town, a slight noise, scarcely perceptible at first, was heard. It grew louder every moment, and all of a sudden, as if by enchantment, and without any one being able to guess how they got there, the Apaches crowned the barricades of the presidio, brandishing flaming torches and uttering the war whoop.
For a moment the inhabitants thought the town was taken; but Major Barnum, who commanded at this post, was too old a soldier, and too accustomed to Indian warfare, to be deceived by their stratagem. At the moment the Apaches were about to cross the barricades, a well-sustained fire opened suddenly upon them, and drove them from the intrenchments much faster than they had scaled them.
The Mexicans charged with the bayonet: for one moment there was a frightful mêlée, from the midst of which rose cries of agony, maledictions, and the sharp clang of steel crossing steel; then the whites regained their position; the Indians disappeared; the town, illumined for so short a time by the blaze of the torches, was again enveloped in darkness; and the silence, broken by the few minutes of onslaught, was once more complete.
This was the only attempt that night. The Indians were up to their work; having failed in their bold coup-de-main, they would, in all probability, convert the attack into a blockade, if they were determined to take the town; or they might retreat altogether, if their miscarriage had led them to despair of mastering it.