Just before sunset, the troops, united in sentiment though divided, as independently pursuing their respective purposes in a parallel course solely by accident, took up the ride towards Monte Tesoro. As they had no doubt that the fugitives would be lodged, for Doña Perla's sake, in her father's house, they had no reason to try to overtake them.
The first interruption to the rapid progress of the two troops, and at the same time the first intimation they had of the revolt of the peons, was their riding into the midst of the column shattered by the sham lancers of Oregon Oliver. The severed portions of this column, like one of those fabulous serpents which had the power of healing its wounds, and joining its segments, had rallied into one mass. The leaders were hesitating on the course to take when the Mexicans appeared, and they feared a renewal of the disaster. Fortunately, before the panic was revived, the Apaches delighted them, for they saw friends in men of their colour if not of their race. An understanding was soon arrived at. Needless to say, Pedrillo and Garcia congratulated themselves on having such allies, and the prospect of overcoming not merely the farm of don Benito, but of many another, made their faces radiant with smiles.
Thus reinforced, the squadrons resumed the advance, followed closely by the peons, who derived much enheartenment from such warlike adherents, and, passing the detachment from Monte Tesoro still ensconced in the pine and cedar woods, the throng poured into the valley with loud clamour echoed by the assembled rebels. This joyous uproar did not tend to reassure the beleaguered Mexicans, though its cause was not perceptible.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
CANNON IS BROUGHT TO BEAR.
Long and patiently had the environed garrison been awaiting the token of well faring with the adventurers who had so daringly left that shelter.
Only in the end of the night had the sudden, and, for the moment, inexplicable apparition of the cattle on which had been imposed that fiery burden, seemed to reveal the operations of their friends.
The charge of the furious and panic-stricken creatures, whose hides were singed and smoked with a nauseating odour, was unresisted by the rebels, huddled together just out of gunshot of the farm, in the obscurity. Nevertheless, as soon as the true nature of this attack was clear, and the more active Indians had speared those animals which had not broken their necks and extinguished the flames in the ditch, the alarm calmed down. It was at this juncture that don Benito, at the head of a hundred horsemen, galloped out of the corral and executed a terrible slashing and hewing, sweeping round amid carnage, and returning with insignificant loss. The moral effect was even greater than the material, for those of the insurgents who had previously thought nothing of rushing up to the farmhouse, and firing a shot at random amid tipsy threats and obscene imprecations, withdrew to a safe distance, and vociferated for the self-constituted leaders to evince their genius.
It was as don Benito's troop returned within the defences that they heard, to their dismay, the well-known war cry of the Apaches only too recently impressed on the hearing of all, and the shout of their newfound robber allies.