"The house is my mark, rest tranquil, your Excellency."
"Very well," sighed Pedrillo, drawing his false leg out of the hole which he had deeply drilled in the earth in his agitation. "I no longer have any uneasiness. Now, let me have six men for my expedition."
"You can have six rogues, who will go anywhere under the leadership of La Chupa—"
"Stay; no, I would rather have your kinsman, Zagal, to be at their head."
"My cousin? This is a grievous slur on a caballero to choose his kinsman as a kind of hostage, but 'tis wartime and we must act like warriors. Zagal shall accompany you, Captain, as you please. Have no fear that I shall scalp him with a cannon shot," said Garcia with a laugh. "He owes me forty odd dollars, to be paid out of our plunder of the hacienda. Your honour is safe next him."
This arrangement completed, the captain had to go forth. He looked to a brace of revolvers in his sword belt, to the sabre that it should play freely, put on a poncho, lined with India-rubber against the rain, and hobbled altogether from the tent. The peon guide awaited him, and lent him his shoulder on his lame side till he had mounted his horse. Already the Indians, to the number of fifty, were in the saddle; they had removed everything of a light colour or that glittered, and had chosen whole-coloured horses with a dark skin.
"Hasten down the hill," said Pedrillo, as his half a dozen rogues galloped up into the troop, "the storm will be on us in ten minutes, confound it! And all nocturnal excursions!"
Indeed, they were hardly out of the hollow, and mounting the slope which gradually brought them to the level of the farmhouse, before they were deluged with rain. Fortunately the lightning was flashing on the other side of the pine forest, where the detachment from the besieged were gladly sheltering themselves, and no glimmer fell upon the cavalcade. The Apaches' bodies cast off the wet like ducks' plumage, whilst the thick blankets of the Mexicans were as serviceable as the chief salteador's waterproof.
The ditch was brimming with water, so much so as to be on the overflow at one or two places where the peons bad wantonly breached it, and the rippling of the waste water was quite noisy. Two of the Indians swam the moat as easily as beavers, plied their hatchets dexterously in the mud till a shelving landing place was formed, and there the troop executed a passage. To ride up to the very stockade, of which the height prevented even a horseman being perceived from the house, though not from a sentinel on the enclosure, was no difficult task.
All remained as gloomy as silent. Beyond doubt, the falling rain had pelted the watchmen into nooks.