"Yes, gossip," the squatter remarked with a grin; "now you can sleep calmly."
"Ah," said the monk, "all the better."
At this moment, a bullet whistled over the Spaniard's head, and flattened against one of the tent poles.
"Malediction!" the squatter yelled, as he sprang up; "those mad wolves again. To arms, lads; here are the redskins."
Within a few seconds, all the gambusinos were alert and ambuscaded behind the bales that formed the wall of the camp. At the same moment, fearful yells, followed by a terrible discharge, burst forth from the prairie.
The squatter's band comprised about twenty resolute men, with the pirates he had enlisted. The gambusinos did not let themselves be terrified; they replied by a point-blank discharge at a numerous band of horsemen galloping at full speed on the camp. The Indians rode in every direction, uttering ferocious yells, and brandishing burning torches which they constantly hurled into the camp.
The Indians, as a general rule, only attack their enemies by surprise; when they have no other object in view but pillage, as soon as they are discovered and meet with a vigorous resistance, they cease a combat which has become objectless to them. But on this occasion the redskins seemed to have given up their ordinary tactics, so obstinately did they assail the gambusino intrenchments; frequently repulsed, they returned with renewed ardour, fighting in the open and trying to crush their enemies by their numbers.
Red Cedar, terrified by the duration of a combat in which his bravest comrades had perished, resolved to attempt a final effort, and conquer the Indians by daring and temerity. By a signal he collected his three sons around him, with Andrés Garote and Fray Ambrosio; but the Indians did not leave them the time to carry out the plan they had formed; they returned to the charge with incredible fury, and a cloud of incendiary arrows and lighted torches fell on the camp from all sides at once.
The fire added its horrors to those of the combat, and ere long the camp was a burning fiery furnace. The redskins, cleverly profiting by the disorder the fire caused among the gambusinos, escaladed the bales, invaded the camp, rushed on the whites, and a hand-to-hand fight commenced. In spite of their courage and skill in the use of arms, the gambusinos were overwhelmed by the masses of their enemies; a few minutes longer, and all would be over with Red Cedar's band.
The squatter resolved to make a supreme effort to save the few men still left him; taking Fray Ambrosio aside, who, since the beginning the action, had constantly fought by his side, he explained his intentions to him; and when he felt that the monk would certainly carry out his plans, he rushed with incredible fury into the thickest of the fight, and felling or stabbing the redskins who stood in his way, succeeded in entering the tent.