He leaped from the wall to the ground, ran sixty or eighty yards down the hill, halted, aimed, and fired. One of the warriors, a fellow in a red shirt who had been conspicuous in the torture scene, rolled over and lay quiet. The Apaches, who had been completely absorbed by their frantic ceremony, and who had not looked for an attack at the moment, nor expected death at such a distance, uttered a cry of surprise and dismay. There was a scramble of ten or fifteen screaming horsemen after the audacious borderer. But immediately on firing he had commenced a rapid retreat, at the same time reloading. He turned and presented his rifle; just then, too, a protecting volley burst from the rampart; another Apache fell, and the rest retreated.
"Capm, it's all right," said Texas, as he reascended the ruin. "We're squar with 'em."
"We might have broken it up," returned Thurstane sullenly.
"No, Capm. You don't know 'em. They'd got thar noses p'inted to torture that gal. If they didn't do it thar, they'd a done it a little furder off. They was bound to do it. Now it's done, they'll travel."
Warned by their last misadventure, the Indians presently retired to their usual camping ground, leaving their victim attached to the sapling.
"I'll fotch her up," volunteered Texas, who had a hyena's hankering after dead bodies. "Reckon you'd like to bury her."
He mounted, rode slowly, and with prudent glances to right and left, down the hill, halted under the tree, stood up in his saddle and worked there for some minutes. The Apaches looked on from a distance, uttering yells of exultation and making opprobrious gestures. Presently Texas resumed his seat and cantered gently back to the ruins, bearing across his saddle-bow a fearful burden, the naked body of a girl of eighteen, pierced with more than fifty arrows, stained and streaked all over with blood, the limbs shockingly mangled, and the mouth stuffed with rags.
While nearly every other spectator turned away in horror, he glared steadily and calmly at the corpse, repeating, "That's Injin fun, that is. That's what they brag on, that is."
"Bury her outside the wall," ordered Thurstane with averted face. "And listen, all you people, not a word of this to the women."
"We shall be catechised," said Coronado.