"Where are they?" all were asking in excited whispers. "Who saw them? Is it another nightmare of Pepe's?"
"No! no!" murmured Rita. "I saw them, I tell you! I saw their faces in the moonlight. I went to get some water. They are climbing up the cliff. I did not stop to count, but there must be many of them, from the sound of their feet. Oh, make haste, make haste!"
The General gave his orders in a low, emphatic tone. Twenty men, with Carlos at their head, glided like shadows across the glade, and disappeared among the trees. Rita's breath came quick, and she prepared to follow; but the old General laid a kind hand on her arm. "No, my child!" he said. "You have done your country a great service this night. Do not imperil your life needlessly. Go rather to your room, and pray for your brother and for us all."
But prayer was far from Rita's thoughts at that moment. "Dear General," she implored, with clasped hands, the tears starting to her eyes, "Let me go! let me go! I implore you! I will pray afterward, I truly will. I will pray while I am fighting, if you will only let me go. See! I have come all this way to fight for my country; and must I stay away from the first battle? Look, dear Señor General! Look at my machete! Isn't it beautiful? it is the sword of a hero; I must use it for him. Let me go!" The beautiful face, upturned in the moonlight, the dark eyes shining through their tears, might have softened a harder heart than that of General Sevillo. He opened his lips to reply, his fatherly hand still on her arm, when suddenly a sharp report was heard. A single shot, then a volley, the shots rattling out, struck back and forth from cliff to cliff, multiplying in hideous echoes. Then broke out cries and groans; the crash of heavy bodies falling back among the trees below, and shouts of "Viva Cuba;" and still the shots rang out, and still the echoes cracked and snapped. Rita turned pale as death, and clasped her hands on her bosom. "Ah! Dios!" she cried. "I had forgotten; there will be blood!" and rushing into her hut, she flung herself face downward on her leafy bed.
The perplexed General looked after her for a moment, pulling his grizzled moustache. "Caramba!" he muttered. "To understand these feminines? Decidedly, this charming child must be sent into safety to-morrow." And shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders, he strode in the direction of the firing.
Ten minutes' sharp fighting, and the skirmish was over. The Spanish "guerilla" was scattered, many of the guerilleros lying dead or wounded at the foot of the precipice, the others scrambling and tumbling down as best they might. Carlos and his men had so greatly the advantage in position, if not in numbers, that not a single Cuban was killed, though two or three were more or less seriously wounded. Among these was the unfortunate Pedro Valdez, who had only that evening returned to camp, having left his child and his old mother in a place of safety. His wife had been allowed to remain for a short time in camp, at the request of the surgeon, as she had had some experience in nursing. Now he was shot in the arm, and his comrades lifted him gently, and carried him back. His wife was waiting for him. She seemed to have expected something of the kind, for she made no outcry; she followed quietly to the clump of trees distant a little way from the rest of the camp, where good Doctor Ferrando had the solitary rancho, the case of surgical instruments and the few rolls of bandages that constituted his field hospital. A rough table had been knocked together for operations; otherwise the sick and wounded fared much as the rest did, sleeping on beds of leaves and dry grass, and fighting the mosquitoes as best they might. Here the bearers laid Pedro down, and Dolores took her place quietly at his side, fanning away the insects that hovered in clouds about the wounded man, holding the poor arm while the doctor dressed it, and behaving as if her life had been spent in a hospital.
Doctor Ferrando spoke a few words of approval, but the woman heeded them little; it was a matter of course that where there was suffering, she should be at work. So, when Pedro presently dropped off to sleep, she moved softly about among the wounded men, smoothing a blanket here, changing a ligature there, doing all with light, swift fingers whose touch healed instead of hurting.
She was sitting beside a lad, the last to be brought in from the scene of the skirmish, when the screen of bushes by the rancho was parted, and Rita appeared. Slowly and timidly she drew near; her face was like marble; her eyes looked unnaturally large and dark. Dolores made a motion to rise, but a gesture bade her keep her place.
"Hush!" said the young girl. "Sit still, Dolores! I have come—to—to learn!"
"To learn, señorita?" repeated the woman, humbly. The señorita was in her grateful eyes a heaven-descended being, whose every look and word must be law; this new bearing amazed and puzzled her.