In the meanwhile the Indian who had thrown Leon had set his knee on his chest with ferocious delight, and was brandishing his knife; but all was not yet over for Leon; by a movement rapid as thought he hurled away his foe, who fell, letting his knife slip from his grasp. It was now the Indian's turn to tremble. Leon seized him by the throat, and throttled him by the pressure of his left hand, while in his right he raised his machete to kill him.
"Die, scoundrel!" he shouted.
He had not finished the sentence when a blow from the butt end of a gun fell on his head, and the smuggler captain fell senseless, while his enemy was dragged away by the man who had thus saved him from a certain death.
When Leon recovered his senses, the Indians had disappeared; of his twenty-five companions, ten still lived, while the others, scalped and horribly mutilated, were stretched out on the ground. Don Pedro Sallazar was stanching, as well as he could, a wound which he had received in the chest; while General Soto-Mayor was on his knees, and holding in his arms the body of his wife, who had been killed by a bullet through the temples.
The old man looked at the wound with a lacklustre eye, and seemed to be no longer conscious of what was going on around him; still the heavy tears that coursed down his pallid cheeks fell one by one on the face of the dead woman.
"And the young ladies?" Leon anxiously asked, as he rose with great difficulty; "I do not see them."
"They have been carried off by the Indians," Don Pedro replied, in a hollow, sullen voice.
"Oh!" said Leon, mad with despair, "I am accursed!"
And, overcome by grief, he fell as if stunned to the ground. At this moment a horseman entered the clearing; it was Major Don Juan, the son of General Soto-Mayor.