"Oh, Don José!" he ejaculated. "Dolores, dear!"
Stupefied, speechless, like a statue, the girl upon the natural pedestal was supporting the lifeless body of the old Mexican. An arrow was broken off in his temple, and his beard, roughly sprouted out and white with this week of hardship, was flooded with the blackening blood of which Benito in his post below had received the drip.
The young man stared fiercely around, and instantly perceiving something on the move in the thicket, sprang up the tree.
At the same time aimed at him to redeem the marksman for his first failure, which had lodged the shaft in the young Mexican's shoulder instead of his head or his heart; a second projectile of the same description whizzed into the gap between his legs, opened by his leap, and smote a knot so violently as to shiver into a dozen splinters.
Unable for want of strength to keep his hold, the youthful Mexican slipped down to the ground. Then, facing about in frenzy of indignation, as being so badgered by the unknown, he called out savagely:
"Coward! Confront the last of your victims, if you have a drop of manly blood!"
Because he had concluded his last shot serious, or from disdain for his antagonist, or sheer recklessness—for it is not likely that a savage so far forgot his training as to let such a white man's taunt sting him into the imprudence—the Indian who had dogged the unfortunate trio stalked out of the underwood, and only ceased his advance when a lance length from the desperate man who had invoked him.
"¡Presente!" he said in Spanish, with a hoarse chuckle, as in one glance he saw the insensible young female form beside the dead Mexican, and don Benito's weak condition.
Indeed, the latter, instead of carrying out his implied threat, tottered back and leaned against the cottonwood, just under one arrow, and with the other shattered shaft bristling at his shoulder.
The red man chose to interpret this movement as a flattery for his warlike appearance, for he smiled contentedly, and, drawing his long knife, cried holding up three fingers of his left hand: