I never saw a man so completely soaring above the fear of death. There was a sublimity about him that I remember being struck with at the time; and I remember, too, feeling the inferiority of my own courage. It was a stupendous picture, as he stood like a colossus clutching his deadly weapon, and looking over his long brown beard at the skulking and cowardly foe. He stood without a motion—without even winking—although the leaden hail hurtled past his head, and cut the grass at his feet with that peculiar “zip-zip” so well remembered by the soldier who has passed the ordeal of a battle.
There was something in it awfully grand—awful even to us; no wonder that it awed our enemies.
I was about to call upon Lincoln to fall back and shelter himself, when I saw him throw up his rifle to the level. The next instant he dropped the butt to the ground with a gesture of disappointment. A moment after, the manoeuvre was repeated with a similar result, and I could hear the hunter gritting his teeth.
“The cowardly skunks!” muttered he; “they keep a-gwine like a bull’s tail in fly-time.”
In fact, every time Lincoln brought his piece to a level, the guerilleros ducked, until not a head could be seen.
“They ain’t as good as thar own dogs,” continued the hunter, turning away from the cliff. “If we hed a lot of loose rocks, Cap’n, we mout keep them down thar till doomsday.”
A movement was now visible among the guerilleros. About one-half of the party were seen to mount their horses and gallop off up the creek.
“They’re gone round by the ford,” said Raoul: “it’s not over a mile and a half. They can cross with their horses there and will be on us in half an hour.”
What was to be done? There was no timber to hide us now—no chaparral. The country behind the cliff was a sloping table, with here and there a stunted palm-tree or a bunch of “Spanish bayonet” (Yucca angustifolia). This would be no shelter, for from the point we occupied, the most elevated on the ridge, we could have descried an object of human size five miles off. At that distance from us the woods began; but could we reach them before our pursuers would overtake us?
Had the guerilleros all gone off by the ford we should have returned to the creek bottom, but a party remained below, and we were cut off from our former hiding-place. We must therefore strike for the woods.