There is one remark which has been often made. It is this: That, generally speaking, men who delight to dabble in gore—who unhesitatingly commit the most atrocious cruelties, and exercise their powers in exciting the terror they love to inspire—are cowards; and when they happen to meet with effective resistance, their cowardice falls to a baseness beyond comparison. Jackals and hyenas are ferocious and cowardly; men are jackals and hyenas—the thing is explained.
At the answer of the leader of the strangers, the mashorqueras became convulsed with terror. They comprehended that they were face to face with resolute foes, without having it in their power to retreat an inch. They crowded close to each other, and fixed their eyes in fright and amazement on the six men who, sitting calmly and impassively before them, bid them defiance.
Don Torribio alone felt no fear. The man was a savage brute, whom the smell of blood intoxicated, and who could only breathe freely in an atmosphere of carnage. Crossing his arms and raising his head defiantly, he answered the words of the unknown with a long laugh of contempt; then, turning to his terror-stricken soldiers:
"Will you suffer yourselves to be intimidated by six men?" he cried. "Come, my children; face about. ¡Vive Dios! these pícaros dare not stand against us."
The soldiers, aroused by the tones of the voice they had so long obeyed, and ashamed of their hesitation, fell in as well as they could, and formed a line in front of the rancho. The lieutenant, putting spurs to his horse, made him execute a demivolte, and resolutely placed himself at the head of his troop. The strangers, notwithstanding the inequality of numbers, did not hesitate a moment, but charged the federalists sword and pistol in hand. Don Torribio received them bravely without retreating a foot. Having discharged their pistols, they took to the sword, and in an instant the mêlée grew terrible. In spite of their prodigies of valour and gigantic efforts, the strangers would, in all probability, have had the worst of it, when suddenly Corporal Luco, who had remained spectator of the fight, with four or five of his comrades, made his horse bound to the front, and, instead of ranging himself on the side of the federalists, attacked them vigorously in flank, and came with his comrades to place himself beside Don Leoncio.
This defection of a party of his soldiers raised Don Torribio's ire to seething point—the more so, as the mashorqueras, not knowing to what cause to attribute the strange conduct of the corporal and his comrades, began to suspect treason, to lose courage, and to reply but feebly to the blows of the assailants; who, seeing them falter, redoubled their efforts for victory.
The arrieros and wagoners, having in some measure recovered from their fright, and seeing the favourable opportunity of avenging the insults and villainies the hirelings of Rosas had so long heaped upon them, armed themselves with anything that fell in their way, and, burning to make up for lost time, rushed headforemost on their ferocious enemies.
But at this very moment loud cries reached their ears. Some forty mounted men entered at full gallop the zone of light proceeding from the post house, and, deploying with amazing dexterity and despatch, surrounded the rancho on all sides.
The riders who had galloped up so opportunely for the assailants and so inopportunely for the colorados, were Don Guzman de Ribera and his peones.