"Ah, well," he growled, "I have done with women. They have had the best of my life. What is left I give to Brazil."
So he, too, made for Las Flores, but slowly, for he was quite exhausted, and his limbs were stiff with the rigors of a wild day in the saddle.
Carmela went back to a household that paid scant heed to her screaming. Dom Corria was there, bare-headed, his gorgeous uniform sword-slashed and blood-bespattered. General Russo, too, was beating his capacious chest and shouting:
"God's bones, let us make a fight of it!"
A sprinkling of soldiers, all dismounted cavalry or gunners, a few disheveled officers, had accompanied De Sylva in his flight. With reckless bravery, he and Russo had tried to rally the troops camped at headquarters. It was a hopeless effort. Half-breeds can never produce a military caste. They may fight valiantly in the line of battle—they will not face the unknown, the terrible, the harpies that come at night, borne on the hurricane wings of panic. Unhappily, De Sylva and his bodyguard were the messengers of their own disaster. The cowardly genius at Pesqueira had planned a surprise. He would not lead it, of course, but in Dom Miguel Barraca he found an eager substitute. It was a coup of the Napoleonic order; an infantry attack along the entire front of the Liberationist position cloaked the launching against the center of a formidable body of cavalry. The project was to thrust this lance into the rebel position, probe it thoroughly, as a surgeon explores a gunshot wound, and extract the offender in the guise of Dom Corria.
The scheme had proved eminently successful. The Liberationists were crumpled up, and here was Dom Corria making his last stand.
He deserved better luck, for he was magnificent in failure. Calm as ever, he tried to be shot or captured when the reserves in camp failed him. Russo and the rest dragged him onward by main force.
"They want me only," he urged. "My death will end a useless struggle. I shall die a little later, when many more of my friends are killed. Why not die now?"
They would not listen.
"It is night!" they cried. "The enemy's horses are spent. A determined stand may give us another chance."