Neither hugged any delusion as to the future. It was materially impossible that with their cartridges all spent, they could successfully resist so many inveterate foes, who, too, would, at any moment, be reinforced without stint from the Yaquis on the hill.
Indeed, thereupon commenced, with the rush of the Indians, one of those unequal contests which are common on the border, and which, when a worthy poet shall arise, will show posterity at what a waste of gallant hearts civilisation has executed its conquests.
Mute, sombre, back to back so closely that the penetrating lance would have spitted the pair, never recoiling so much as a hand's breadth, plying the hunting knife for the one, and the sword of Pedrillo in his victor's grasp for the other, the unflinching couple, like a Janus animated, held out against the ever-onsetting foe.
Any other enemies must have been impressed with admiration.
Their bared arms were hacked and slit; the left of Gladsden hung disabled; but, on that side, Oliver's formidable right hand was performing miracles of valour and dexterity enough for both. They streamed with blood, which matted their locks and soaked their clothes, dangling in tatters through which their fair skin momently gleamed in glaring contrast with that of their dusky foes until dyed ruddy like the rest.
"How goes it, pard.?" queried Oliver, in a kind of lull in the rain of cuts, and blows, and thrusts which nothing but the very frenzy of the Indians, each to deal the stroke, prevented being fatal a hundred times. "I'm gitting my second wind myself and can go on carving till morning!"
There was no response to the jest; but the Oregonian felt the firm body that had been ever so long a rock of support, slowly weighing upon him. Then, alarmed for the very first time, or rather instantly inspired with sympathy and wild indignation at the injustice of so brave a man succumbing under the blows of such ignoble creatures, he lifted his voice as an appeal to the rectifier of such abuses, in his restricted mind:
"Cuss ye, for a heap of dirty niggers!" he vociferated. "Six at a time we'd have butchered you up harnsum! Whoop-ho! Will no one of the colour of a white man let us have ten minutes to recruit; when we'll thrash them all agen, honest Injin!"
A deep, hoarse laugh at the speech, not at all understood, was the reply.
But a cry of terror was elsewhere audible.