For his age Jorge was endowed with unwonted powers, but his frame had not fully set, and he had an antagonist whose vigour surpassed the common, too. Nevertheless, the Mexican was not dismayed, and the hunter took care not to betray any apprehension he felt as to the result of the terrible duel. If Jorge smiled, it was because he relied on his skill and agility. On the farm he had joined in all the wrestling and knife play of the Vaqueros, and Old Silvano had passed him as a pupil to whom there was nothing more he could teach. Therefore, the youth, gifted with lofty courage and unalterable coolness, believed himself capable of struggling with advantage.
As a kind of chivalrous signal, the Indian slapped his shield resonantly.
They mutually advanced till their forward feet almost touched. For a moment their blades clashed and then the red man, shouting with savage joy, delivered a terrific cut. But the air alone was severed, the agile Mexican having shifted his position with great celerity. Their first encounter was merely a test of one another's style, on which would be founded the passage of arms itself. They fell to it anew, but this time also, don Jorge showed incredible quickness; he eluded the blows, parried them or fenced them off with all that dexterity which a Mexican should exhibit in the management of a weapon which is to him what the navaja is to the Spanish peasant. With giddy rapidity he spun round the savage; and when he got a cut in, as the phraseology of such sport has it, it was a telling one. The shield, however tough the buffalo hide, could not long resist such hearty strokes; sliced off into tissue thinness, cleft, gaping wider and wider with its own tension, Iron Shirt suddenly cast it at the young man to bewilder him and at the same time darted forward. But the Mexican, who uses his blanket sometimes in just the same way as a blind, is taught to keep his eyes on his opponent's, and the ferocious gleam in the Apache's had warned him; he received the charge firmly; parried the cut with excellent precision, though the rush brought the two heaving breasts in contact, and as the Indian receded, lest he should be grappled, he struck in turn. The blow, from the handle turning in the grasp a little paralysed by the late ward, came flat on the savage's shoulder and, diverted upwards, removed his car as clean as if done by a surgeon. Iron Shirt yelled with fury.
"You will never more hear an infant wail, pierced by your coward arrows!" hissed don Jorge, leaning forward. "Come again, and I will sunder the other!"
More hideously than before this third meeting ensued. No longer so much on the defensive and aggressive, but bent on leaving his mark, the Mexican gave two cuts for the other's each one. All of them left a bleeding trace. One would have concluded that he meant to hack the redskin's surface into a chessboard. The slashed face of the Apache had lost human semblance; the gashes already were swollen, and his eyes were sealing with blood; he groaned with tantalised rage, however, more than pain, whilst the Mexican, anticipating his victory ever since he had made mincemeat of the buckler, redoubled his hail of steel. Now it was the Apache chief who only stood on guard.
"There!" cried don Jorge, taking his cutlass in both hands, and pressing forward so that their knees knocked, "That is to avenge my father!"
On receiving this irresistible chopping blow, which beat down his jagged edged blade, Iron Shirt lifted up a yell of spite and despair. The steel cleft through all, top knot, frontal bone and brow, and, opening his arms, he reeled, half turning, and fell without a stir on the blood-besprinkled sands, the machete left in the wound, so inextricably had it been driven there.
Oliver approached, and at the same time bending over the stiffening body and patting the panting conqueror on the shoulder, he said:
"Ef them doggoned 'Paches was to have seen this fight they would not cross into Mexico for a year, I reckon. You've fout him squar' and fa'r, a riggler stand-up fight, and you're a credit to the father, whose wiping out don't count one for them red niggers now, nohow."
They sat down there to rest, and Oliver related his adventure.