Unfortunately, the general commanding the provinces had but a very limited military force at his disposal; scarce amounting to six hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry, without field artillery. Hence, in spite of his lively desire to give the Captain a respectable force, as he was obliged to scatter his troops along the whole seaboard of the two states, he found it impossible to send to Quitoval more than one hundred infantry and fifty cavalry. In spite of the numerical weakness of his troops the Captain did not despair. He was one of those men to whom the performance of duty was everything; and who carry out without a murmur the most extraordinary order.
Still, as he expected to be attacked at any moment by an army of ten or fifteen thousand veteran Indians, amply supplied with firearms, and who, through being accustomed to fight with Spaniards, could not be easily terrified, he had to augment the number of his soldiers, so as to have men enough to line the entrenchments he had thrown up round the town. He had two means by which to obtain this result, and he employed them. The first consisted in making the great mine owners understand that they must participate in the defences of the pueblo, either personally or by arming and placing under his orders a certain number of the peons they employed; for if the Indians succeeded in seizing the Mineral, the source of their wealth would be at once dried up.
The great owners understood the Captain's reasons the more easily because their interests were at stake. They therefore enthusiastically followed his advice, and raised at their common charge a corps of one hundred and fifty Opatas—brave soldiers, thoroughly devoted to the Whites. They placed this corps under the Captain's orders, pledging themselves to pay and support it so long as the danger lasted. Don Marcos thus doubled his army at one stroke. This success, which he had been far from expecting, owing to his profound knowledge of the apathy and selfishness of his countrymen, induced him to try the second plan.
This was very simple. It consisted in enlisting, for a certain bounty, as many as he could of the adventurers who always swarm on the borders, and whose neutrality is at times more formidable than declared enmity. The sum offered by the Captain was two ounces per man, one payable on enlistment, the other at the termination of the campaign. This offer, seductive though it was, did not produce all the effect the Captain expected from it. The adventurers responded but feebly to the appeal made to them. These men, in whose hearts patriotic love does not exist, and who only care for pillage, saw in the insurrection of the Indians a source of disorder, and, consequently, of rapine. They cared very little about defending a state of things which their predacious instincts led them, on the contrary, to attack.
Thirty or forty adventurers, however, responded to the call; and these immoral men, who were impatient at the yoke of discipline, were rather an embarrassment than an assistance to the Captain; still as, take them altogether, they were sturdy fellows, and thoroughly acquainted with Indian warfare, he attached them to his cavalry, which was thus raised to a strength of one hundred men. Don Marcos thus found himself at the head of two hundred and fifty infantry and one hundred horse—a force which appeared to him, if well directed, more than sufficient to withstand, behind good entrenchments, the effort of the whole Indian army.
We are aware that this number of men defending a town will produce a smile of pity among European readers, who are accustomed to see on battlefields masses of three hundred thousand men come into collision. But all is relative in this world. In America, where the population is comparatively small, great things have often been decided at the bayonet's point by armies whose relative strength did not exceed that of one of our line regiments. In the last battle fought between the Texans and Mexicans—a battle which decided the independence of Texas, the two armies together did not amount to two thousand men, and yet the collision was terrible, and victory obstinately disputed. In the actions between white men and Indians, the latter, in spite of their indomitable valour, were almost always defeated in a pitched battle, in spite of their crushing superiority of numbers. Not through the courage of their enemies, but by their discipline and military skill. The latter is certainly very limited, but sufficient for adversaries such as they have to combat.
One night, when the Captain returned home after his usual visit to the pueblo to assure himself that all was in order, a ragged lepero, more than half intoxicated with mezcal and pulque, handed him with an infinitude of bows a dirty slip of paper folded up in the shape of a letter. Don Marcos de Niza was not accustomed to neglect anything. He attached as much importance to apparently frivolous events as to those which seemed to possess a certain gravity. He stopped, took the letter, gave a real to the lepero, who went away quite satisfied, and entered his house, which was situated on the Plaza Mayor, in the centre of the pueblo.
After throwing his cap and sword on a table, the Captain opened the letter. He read it at first rather carelessly; but ere long he began frowning, and read the letter a second time, attentively weighing each word. Then at the end of a moment he folded up the letter, and said in a low voice—"I will go."
This letter came from Kidd. The Captain had been long acquainted with the bandit, and knew certain peculiar facts about him which would have been most disagreeable to the bandit, had the latter suspected that the Captain was so thoroughly initiated in the secrets of his vagabond life. Hence Don Marcos fancied he had no right to neglect the overtures the other was pleased to make; while keeping on his guard and determined to punish him severely if he deceived him. The Captain, therefore, proceeded without hesitation to the place where the adventurer appointed to meet him. He had waited for him for several hours with exemplary patience, and would probably have waited longer still, had not chance suddenly brought them face to face in the way we have described.
When the two men had entered the house, and the door closed after them, Don Marcos de Niza, still closely followed by the bandit, who, in spite of his impudence, looked around him timidly, like a wolf caught in a sheepfold, led him into a room the door of which he carefully closed. The Captain pointed to a chair, sat down at a table, laid a brace of pistols ostentatiously within his reach, and said—