"I came to help. I will help! Tia Teresa died last night; I have no one now. I can do something. And you—you are hurt! Oh, Jack, you are covered with blood! Come, come, at once, let me do something for you."
"I didn't know it," said Jack simply. He brushed his hand across his brow; it was smeared with blood. Looking at his coat he saw blood trickling through a rent in the sleeve. "It's nothing," he said. "I don't feel a scratch. If you must help, Juanita—and it is brave of you,—why, there are many others who need attention more than I."
"You first, Jack. Come at once; I insist! How can you lead your men if you are blinded with blood? Jack, you are doing grandly; it is splendid!"
"You are right, Señorita," put in Tio Jorge, who had come up with them. "All the men say the English Señor is a hero, and, por Dios! the French will never get the better of him."
By this time they had reached the house, where Juanita insisted on bathing and binding up Jack's wounds before she attended to any of the others. Jorge Arcos had been slightly wounded in the dash across the barricade, and afterwards Jack remembered, with a strange glow, the roughly-expressed gratitude of the savage innkeeper as Juanita tenderly assisted him.
While she went about on her errand of mercy, Jack consulted with his lieutenants. The new-comers recognized him unhesitatingly as their leader, and declared that they would remain with him and support him to the utmost of their power. None doubted that the next fight would be the most terrible of all; it was only a question how long an interval would elapse before it came. The Spaniards had lost some forty men since the morning; they were all on the verge of collapse; only Don Cristobal's men, who had been unmolested at the Vega barricade, were for the moment fit for active work.
To ascertain the movements of the French, Jack went with Tio Jorge and Jorge Arcos to the roof of the Casa Hontanon, that adjoined the empty shell of Vallejo. From that coign of vantage they could overlook the whole district. After a time they saw in the distance a compact body of some 200 men approaching through the ruins from the direction of the Franciscan convent. With great difficulty they were dragging a gun over the heaps of obstacles. It must have been taken from one of the batteries now mounted near the Coso. Slowly they approached; nearly an hour elapsed between their first appearance and the placing of the gun at the end of the street facing the Tobar barricade, on the same spot whence the spiked gun had been withdrawn.
As soon as the gun was fairly in position, a renewal of the bombardment of the barricade was commenced, and the sound of heavy shots showed that an attack was being simultaneously made on the Vega barricade.
"We can't hold Vallejo any longer," said Jack. "We shall be cut off from support."
"Not so, Señor," said Arcos at once. "I will hold it with twenty men. If the French capture it, our flank will be at their mercy."