"Is rapidly returning."
"All the better. Would you be capable of firing in your own defence, without leaving the cart?"
"I think so. But do you fear any trap? The spot where we now are, appears most favourable for it."
"Does it not! Well, you have spoken the truth, I fear an ambuscade. Here is a rifle, and if needs must, make use of it."
"Trust to me. Thanks," he added, as he clutched the weapon with a delight he did not attempt to conceal.
The Jaguar then placed himself at the head of his troop, and gave orders to set out again. Long before this, the main body of the army had passed the cross, the heads of the columns were already entering the defile, a movement which, owing to the narrowness, produced some disorder the leaders were trying to repress, when suddenly a shower of canister burst from the Cerro Pardo, and made wide gaps in the crowded ranks of the Texans. At the same instant a terrible, shout was heard from the other end of the gorge, and Don Felix Paz' cuadrilla appeared galloping at full speed toward the main body.
At the first moment the Texans had to make way for these horsemen, whom they supposed to be closely pursued by a still invisible enemy; but their surprise changed into terror and stupor when they saw this vanguard dash at them and mercilessly sabre them with shouts of "Mejico! Mejico! Federación!"
The Texans were betrayed! Suffering from a terror that almost attained to madness, unable to form in this limited spot, decimated by the canister incessantly discharged at them, and sabred by Don Felix' cuadrilla, they had but one thought—that of flight. But at the moment when they tried to turn, the terrible cry of "Mejico! Mejico! mueran los rebeldes!" resounded like a funeral knell in their rear, and Colonel Melendez, at the head of his five hundred horses, dashed at the Texans, who were thus caught between two fires.
The medley then assumed the fearful proportions of one of those mediæval butcheries in which man, having attained the paroxysm of fury, intoxicated by the sharp smell of blood, the powder, smoke, and the din of battle, kills for the sake of killing with the pleasure of a wild beast, growing excited by the massacre of every victim that falls, and far from satiating his hatred, finds it increase in proportion to the corpses piled up on the blood-stained ground.
Flight was impossible, and resistance seemed the same. At this supreme hour, when all appeared lost and the cause of liberty was about to be eternally buried under the pile of corpses, an irresistible movement suddenly took place in the terrified crowd, which opened like a ripe fruit through the bloody track thus made by main force. The Jaguar now dashed forward, splendid in his wrath and despair, brandishing his machete above his head, and followed by his brave cuadrilla. A cry of delight saluted the arrival of the daring freebooter, who had been obliged to cut his way through Colonel Melendez' Mexicans, as they vainly strove to stop his passage.