“Ho!” he shrieked, to be heard above the din of battle in the plaza. “To the rescue! Hostiles! Your general is being slain! To the rescue!”
A wounded man sitting before the door heard him and spread the alarm. A score of hostiles left the church and ran across the plaza to peer through the window of the guest house. They had been told not to enter there, but what they saw caused them to disregard their orders. In an instant they were battering at the door and shrieking to their comrades.
They appeared at the windows, some of them holding muskets ready to fire, but they dared not for fear of sending a bullet to the heart of their leader. Purposely, the caballero circled so that his enemy was between him and the windows; and now, feeling his strength going, half sick because of the pain his shoulder gave him, he attempted a quick end to the combat.
There flashed through his mind what fate was in store for the señorita if he went down before this man. He remembered other things, too, that gave him an unnatural strength.
“The hole in the wall—get to the hole in the wall,” he cried to the girl; and she glided past the fireplace, not taking her eyes from the combatants an instant, until she stood where he had commanded.
A heavy timber was being crashed against the door now. Hostiles had left the windows to help break in. The caballero fell back toward the aperture, gasping, half reeling, blood flowing from cuts on his forearm. He staggered, and his antagonist rushed.
And then they were locked in each other’s arms for an instant while the caballero, calling upon all his remaining strength, bent the other man backward, broke his hold, drove home the knife!...
He stepped back, and the body of the other crashed to the floor. There was no question of the man’s death, for the caballero knew his poniard had found the heart.
Reeling toward the corner, as the heavy door began to splinter, hearing the cries of the girl in his ears as she begged him to make haste, he stopped an instant to pick up his sword from the floor. And then he was by her side, and she was half supporting him with her arms, and the big door fell with a crash to let a score of hostiles pour over it into the guest house.
A flash of flame—a bullet struck the wall within a foot of his head!