Overland: A Novel

by John William De Forest

All that Texas wanted, however, was time. If he could pass a half minute without a disabling wound, he would have help. He retreated a little, or rather he edged away toward the right, wheeling and curveting after the manner of the Apaches, in order to present an unsteady mark for their archery. To keep them at a distance he fired one barrel of his revolver, though without effect. Meantime he dodged incessantly, now throwing himself forward and backward in the saddle, now hanging over the side of his horse and clinging to his neck. It was hard and perilous work, but he was gaining seconds, and every second was priceless. Notwithstanding his extreme peril, he calculated his chances with perfect coolness and with a sagacity which was admirable.

But this intelligent savage had to do with savages as clever as himself. The Apaches saw Coronado coming up on their rear, and they knew that they must make short work of the hunter, or must let him escape. While a score or so faced about to meet the Mexicans, a dozen charged with screeches and brandished lances upon the Texan. Now came a hand-to-hand struggle which looked as if it must end in the death of Smith and perhaps of several of his assailants. But cavalry fights are notoriously bloodless in comparison to their apparent fury; the violent and perpetual movement of the combatants deranges aim and renders most of the blows futile; shots are fired at a yard distance without hitting, and strokes are delivered which only wound the air.

One spear stuck in Smith's saddle; another pierced his jacket-sleeve and tore its way out; only one of the sharp, quickly-delivered points drew blood. He felt a slight pain in his side, and he found afterward that a lance-head had raked one of his ribs, tearing up the skin and scraping the bone for four or five inches. Meantime he shot a warrior through the head, sent another off with a hole in the shoulder, and fired one barrel without effect. He had but a single charge left (saving this for himself in the last extremity), when he burst through the prancing throng of screeching, thrusting ragamuffins, and reached the side of Coronado.

Here another hurly-burly of rearing and plunging combat awaited him. Coronado, charging as an old Castilian hidalgo might have charged upon the Moors, had plunged directly into the midst of the Apaches who awaited him, giving them little time to use their arrows, and at first receiving no damage. The six rifles of his Mexicans sent two Apaches out of their saddles, and then came a capering, plunging joust of lances, both parties using the same weapon. Coronado alone had sabre and revolver; and he handled them both with beautiful coolness and dexterity; he rode, too, as well as the best of all these other centaurs. His superb horse whirled and reared under the guidance of a touch of the knees, while the rider plied firearm with one hand and sharply-ground blade with the other. Thurstane, an infantryman, and only a fair equestrian, would not have been half so effective in this combat of caballeros.

Coronado's first bullet knocked a villainous-looking tatterdemalion clean into the happy hunting grounds. Then came a lance thrust; he parried it with his sabre and plunged within range of the point; there was a sharp, snake-like hiss of the light, curved blade; down went Apache number two. At this rate, providing there were no interruptions, he could finish the whole twenty. He went at his job with a handy adroitness which was almost scientific, it was so much like surgery, like dissection. His mind was bent, with a sort of preternatural calmness and cleverness, upon the business of parrying lance thrusts, aiming his revolver, and delivering sabre cuts. It was a species of fighting intellection, at once prudent and destructive. It was not the headlong, reckless, pugnacious rage of the old Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian berserker. It was the practical, ready, rational furor of the Latin race.

Presently he saw that two of his rancheros had been lanced, and that there were but four left. A thrill of alarm, a commencement of panic, a desire to save himself at all hazards, crisped his heart and half paralyzed his energy. Remembering with perfect distinctness that four of his barrels were empty, he would perhaps have tried to retreat at the risk of being speared in the back, had he not at this critical moment been joined by Texas Smith.

That instinctive, ferocious, and tireless fighter, while seeming to be merely circling and curveting among his assailants, contrived to recharge two barrels of his revolver, and was once more ready for business. Down went one Apache; then the horse of another fell to reeling and crouching in a sickly way; then a charge of half a dozen broke to right and left in irresolute prancings. At sight of this friendly work Coronado drew a fresh breath of courage, and executed his greatest feat yet of horsemanship and swordsmanship. Spurring after and then past one of the wheeling braves, he swept his sabre across the fellow's bare throat with a drawing stroke, and half detached the scowling, furious, frightened head from the body.

There was a wide space of open ground before him immediately. The Apaches know nothing of sabre work; not one of those present had ever before seen such a blow or such an effect; they were not only panic-stricken, but horror-stricken. For one moment, right between the staring antagonists, a bloody corpse sat upright on a rearing horse, with its head fallen on one shoulder and hanging by a gory muscle. The next moment it wilted, rolled downward with outstretched arms, and collapsed upon the gravel, an inert mass.

Texas Smith uttered a loud scream of tigerish delight. He had never, in all his pugnacious and sanguinary life, looked upon anything so fascinating. It seemed to him as if his heaven—the savage Walhalla of his Saxon or Danish berserker race—were opened before him. In his ecstasy he waved his dirty, long fingers toward Coronado, and shouted, "Bully for you, old hoss!"

But he had self-possession enough, now that his hand was free for an instant from close battle, to reload his rifle and revolver. The four rancheros who still retained their saddles mechanically and hurriedly followed his example. The contest here was over; the Apaches knew that bullets would soon be humming about their ears, and they dreaded them; there was a retreat, and this retreat was a run of an eighth of a mile.