Jack Ballington, Forester

by John Trotwood Moore

Instantly we saw our error in supposing our friends were dead, for when the bound soldiers saw two of the Juramentados seize their borangs, each made a violent effort to break his bonds.

"That priest is mine," said Moriarty, "I've always loved 'em."

We fired together. The priest, two Juramentados, and five warriors lay dead or dying. The others were instantly an awakened den of wolves.

I flinch, Eloise, in writing you this, for it brings the tears even now as I write. Its ending was in blood and the passing of two I loved as only one man learns to love another who has backed him to death in the last ditch. They rushed us quickly, for their leaders were Juramentados and they never retreat, but like a wounded jungle lion charge instantly the men who have wounded them. They were ten to one against us, and fast and furious was their rush, but, though it was only a short distance, we bunched, and shoulder to back shingled the ground with their dead, stopping many of them, who died at our very feet. The others swarmed upon us, led by howling Juramentados, until even now I awake at night with their twanging hyena howl in my ears. Our Colts crackled fiercely for an instant in their faces. Then Davis fell and I would have followed him had not Moriarty, shooting quick and shouldering between us, blown out the brute's brains with the last shell in his revolver....

I was dazed, bloody, and knocked down into the fissure at our backs by the glancing borang blow of the last of the Juramentados.... When I came fully to myself I crawled for protection under an outcropping rock, and none too soon, for the fanatic above hurled a spear the next instant that quivered in the spot I had just left.

And, emboldened by the frenzied Juramentado, and seeking my blood, I saw other heads, peering from over the fissure side and around boulder and rock.

I was protected for a time under the boulder. I was faint, and hearing running water I drank.

* * * * *

I prayed that I might not faint again. The wound on my head was a clean cut. "If only I do not faint again," I kept saying while I bathed my wound, and, packing my cap with my handkerchief, pulled it tight over my temples to shut off the blood.

Then I became calm and indifferent. I marvel even now to think how undreading of death I was, feeling that I was so soon to die; undreading, for in all the queerness of my head and the dizziness and throbbing and the bitterness of the knowledge of the unequal fight, I thought always of you and of Andrew Jackson, who when shot by Dickinson, clinched his teeth on a bullet to keep from biting his tongue, clinched, stood, and killed his man! ...