Half a dozen riders heard and looked. They swung up their carbines and fired as they galloped. Strawbridge could see the spatter of the bullets against the big leaves; next moment the head and shoulders made a limp lurch forward, and the figure of a man dropped out of the palm and turned over and over in the air. With a primitive satisfaction the drummer watched the fall. He had wiped out an enemy. He stared down the playa. Far down where the quay narrowed with distance, a line of men were marching through the sunshine. He could see the glitter of their bayonets and their intense shadows moving in front of them. At sight of these federal soldiers the carbines about Strawbridge began a staccato snapping. The distant line of soldiers stopped, knelt, aimed, like a little row of toys in the brilliant sunshine. Then came the faint crack of their volley.
The effect appalled Strawbridge. A peon on the drummer's right reeled from his saddle; ahead of him a horse reared and fell, flinging his rider on the cobbles, under the hoofs of the horses. The drummer saw the wretch thresh about as he was broken upon the stones.
For answer the insurgents deployed the width of the playa, between the houses and the palms, and charged. Horses, mules, howling peons, and chattering carbines roared down the quay. The Federals fired one more volley, then suddenly broke and fled. They scurried in every direction. Their little human speed was so puny that the horses overhauled them like giants. A feeling of tremendous strength filled Strawbridge. He was a Gulliver plunging down on Lilliputians. He selected a man to kill. The Federal sprinted desperately, but his short legs seemed barely to move in front of the English stallion.
The chase became a vertigo. A hard pulse pounded in Strawbridge's ears. Never before had he known the terrific excitement of hunting a man down and killing him. The drummer's adroitness and horsemanship sharpened to the delight of murder. He cleared his carbine and aimed at the runner. He meant to hit him in the cross of his canteen strap. He pulled the trigger....
A terrific concussion almost bowled over the drummer and his horse. It displaced the whole platoon. Strawbridge whirled, and saw the roofs of the adobes lined with federal troops, firing down on the cavalry.
Men and horses fell beneath continuous volleys. The squadron was falling back toward the river. The men acted as if they struggled in the teeth of a furious wind-storm. Suddenly some of them wheeled off toward the river. Rosales was behind his men, howling and spewing Spanish oaths. He beat the fugitives with the back of his sword. In the uproar the hatchet-faced lieutenant, leaning forward toward the enemy, pointed at the roofs. He might have been trying to reach the crashing rifles with the tip of his saber. He was howling for his men to charge. A flame of sympathy went through Strawbridge for this indomitable knave of an officer. He headed his stallion about in the careening column. He shouted a mixture of English and Spanish:
"Adelante! Bore into 'em! Pronto! Wipe 'em out—the hellions!"
The powerful horse might have been a stanchion shoring up the column. His mere lunge turned three or four fugitives toward the enemy. This whirling movement became the focus of a renewed charge. Every man took courage from Strawbridge, from the thin-faced reprobate who led them. The column flung itself into the teeth of the fire from the roofs.
The stink and sting of powder-gas jabbed up Strawbridge's nose. The Federals on the roof shone dimly behind a mist of smokeless powder. As Strawbridge charged in, he could see the face of a man staring at him, and the circle of a rifle muzzle under his right eye. The cavalry plunged in against the mud walls. Horses smashed against them, reared, fell, or squatted trembling at this blank obstruction. What for? Strawbridge did not know. He was furiously angry. He meant to strike.
Rosales had directed his charge toward the lowest roof in the whole playa side. It was not more than eight feet high. The focusing of his fire on this point had cut down the defense just here and left a gap in the line of defenders. As Rosales dashed up to this building, he caught the adobe eaves and succeeded in drawing himself up to the roof. A Federal seemed to discharge a gun through his head, but the daredevil pressed on, with his automatic going. Half a dozen, a dozen other llaneros followed. A score gained footing on the low roof. They were amazing horsemen. The Federals were not deployed on the roofs. They could fire only from the ends of their columns. The knot of cavalry on the red tiles grew, expanded, pressed back the feeble ends of the enemy. The fight had transferred itself from the streets to the house-tops—the classic stage for South American battles.