When only fifty feet separated Geronimo from the Mexicans, he leveled his shotgun, cocked it, and fired. The weapon spewed its glass beads forth, and half a dozen Mexicans fell. Flinging the now-useless shotgun from him, Geronimo leveled his lance and raced on.
He saw Naiche and his warriors swarm out of the woods to attack from the rear. At the same time he saw the Mexican cavalry charge to the aid of their hard-pressed comrades.
An officer, saber raised, rode straight at Geronimo, determined to ride him down. Geronimo sidestepped, thrust with his lance, brought the officer out of his saddle, and lost his lance in doing so.
Armed with only a knife, he awaited the next horseman. He dodged beneath the soldier's saber, caught the arm that wielded it, and pulled the rurale from his saddle. They rolled in a desperate struggle for the saber until a stray bullet, ricocheting across the battle-field, buried itself in the rurale's brain and he went limp.
Geronimo leaped to his feet, grabbed the saber, and went on fighting with it until he took another lance from a dead Apache.
Before sunset, the battered remnants of the rurales were trembling behind Arispe's walls. There would be wailing soon in some of the lodges of the Mimbreno, the Nedni, the Chiricahuas. But for every Mimbreno who had been slaughtered in the massacre of Kas-Kai-Ya, and for every warrior who had died before Arispe, two rurales lay dead on the field of battle.