The Rebel Chief: A Tale of Guerilla Life

by Gustave Aimard

Don Andrés darted at the gun, which he threw up.

"It is my son!" he said.

The shot passed harmlessly through the air.

"Hum! I fancy you will repent having saved his life, señor," Dominique coldly replied.

Don Andrés, dragged away by the count and Dominique, entered his apartments, all the issues to which his peons hastily barricaded, and then kept up a sustained fire from the windows on the besiegers.

Don Melchior had an understanding with the partisans of Juárez. Reduced, as the majordomo had very correctly told the count, to a state of desperation by the speedy marriage of his sister, and the inevitable loss of the fortune of which he had so long entertained the hope of being sole heir, the young man forgot all moderation, and, under certain conditions accepted by Cuéllar, though with, the intention of not fulfilling them, he had proposed to the latter to surrender the hacienda to him; and all the measures had been taken in consequence. It was then arranged that a portion of the cuadrilla, under the orders of resolute officers, should attempt a surprise by the secret passage, which the young man had previously made known. Then, while this troop was operating, the other of the cuadrilla, under Cuéllar's own orders, and guided by don Melchior, would silently scale the walls of the hacienda on the side of the corrals, which the inhabitants would doubtless neglect to defend. We have related the success of this double attack.

Cuéllar, though he was still ignorant of it, had lost one half of his cuadrilla, who were buried under the ruins of the grotto. With the men left him he was at this moment waging an obstinate fight with the peons of the hacienda, who, knowing they had to deal with the band of Cuéllar, the most ferocious and sanguinary of all Juárez' guerilleros, and that this band never granted quarter, fought with the energy of desperation, which renders strength tenfold as great. The combat lasted some time. The peons, ambushed in the apartments, had lined the windows with everything that came to hand, and fired under cover at the assailants scattered about the courtyards, on whom they entailed considerable losses. Cuéllar was furious, not alone at this unforeseen resistance, but also at the incomprehensible delay of the soldiers of his cuadrilla who had entered by the grotto, and who should have joined him long ere this. He had certainly heard the noise of the explosion, but as he was at the time at a considerable distance from the hacienda, in a direction diametrically opposed to that where the explosion took place, the noise had reached his ears indistinctly, and he had paid no further attention to it; but the inexplicable delay of his comrades at this moment, when their help would have been so valuable, was beginning to cause him lively anxiety, and he was on the point of sending one of his men off to hurry the laggards, when suddenly shouts of victory were raised from the interior of the buildings he was attacking, and several guerilleros appeared at the windows, brandishing their weapons joyously. It was owing to don Melchior that this decisive success was obtained. While the main body of the assailants attacked the buildings in front, he, accompanied by several resolute men, stepped through a low window, which in the first moment of confusion they had forgotten to barricade like the rest. He had entered the interior, and suddenly appeared before the besieged, whom his presence terrified, and on whom his comrades rushed with sabres and pistols.

At this moment it was no longer a fight but a horrible butchery. The peons, in spite of their entreaties, were seized by the conquerors, stabbed, and hurled through the windows into the courtyard. The guerilleros soon poured through all the buildings, pursuing the wretched peons from room to room, and pitilessly massacring them. They thus reached a large drawing room, whose large folding doors were wide open; but on arriving there they not merely stopped, but recoiled with an instinctive movement of terror before the terrible spectacle that was presented to them. This room was splendidly lit up by a number of candles, placed in all the chandeliers and on the various articles of furniture. In one corner of the room a barricade had been erected by piling up the furniture: behind this barricade, doña Dolores had sought shelter with all the wives and children of the hacienda peons, two paces in front of the barricade, four men were standing erect with a gun in one hand and a pistol in the other. These four men were don Andrés, the count, Dominique and Leo Carral: two barrels of gunpowder with the heads knocked out were placed near them.

"Halt," the count said in a jeering voice, "halt, I request, caballeros; one step further, and we blow up the house. Do not pass the threshold, if you please."

The guerilleros were careful not to disobey this courteous hint, for at the first glance they recognized with whom they had to deal. Don Melchior stamped his foot savagely on seeing himself thus rendered powerless.