"Forward, then, in heaven's name! Each of us must be worth ten men!" the Frenchman shouted, as he suddenly turned his horse on its hind legs. The four men rushed at full speed on the Apaches, uttering a formidable yell. On arriving within range they discharged their rifles, and four Apaches fell.
The Indians, intimidated by this sudden attack, which they were far from anticipating, dispersed in every direction to avoid the shock of their daring adversaries; then, collecting in a compact mass, they charged in their turn, uttering their war cry, and brandishing their weapons. But the hunters received them with a second discharge, which hurled four more Indians on the sand, and then started in different directions to collect again, one hundred and fifty yards further on.
"Courage, my friends!" Valentine cried, "Those scoundrels do not know how to use their weapons; if we liked We could hold them in check the whole day."
"That will not be necessary," Don Pablo remarked; "look there!"
In fact, the fugitives, profiting by the moment's respite which the hunters' attack on the Apaches granted them, had reached an islet about one hundred yards in circumference, in the middle of the stream, where they were temporarily in safety.
"It is now our turn," Valentine loudly shouted; "a final charge to drive those devils back, and then to the islet!"
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" the hunters then shouted, and they rushed on the Apaches.
There were a few minutes of hand-to-hand fighting, but the Apaches at length broke, and the hunters, freed by prodigies of valour, retreated to the riverbank, from which they were not more than twenty yards distant. The others plunged into the river, but suddenly Valentine's horse stood up, gave a prodigious bound, and fell back on its rider—the noble animal was literally riddled with arrows.
The Apaches uttered a formidable yell of joy, on seeing one of their enemies rolling on the ground, and they rushed up to scalp him. But Valentine had risen to his feet immediately; kneeling behind the body of his horse, which he converted into a breastwork, he discharged at the Indians first his rifle, and then his pistols, being supported by the fire of the hunters, who had reached the islet.
The Apaches, exasperated at being held in check by one man, rushed upon him, as if to crush him beneath their weight. Valentine, to whom his firearms were now useless, seized his rifle by the barrel, and employed it like a mace, falling back step by step, but always keeping his front to the enemy.