"Buen viage à los infiernos!" was the savage reply of the dragoons, and heads and hands fell in all directions.
"Infernal villains!" exclaimed Don Manuel, overcome by his indignation at the barbarity of the soldiery. And hardly were the words spoken, when, by an incontrollable impulse, he raised the pistols he still held in his hands, and fired them at the dragoons; then hurrying to one of the mules, he snatched another brace from the holsters attached to the saddle.
"Por el amor de Dios! Por la santissima madre! Think of your mother, think of the count, of Elvira!" implored Alonzo, throwing his arms round his young master.
"Stand off!" shouted the youth fiercely; "or by the living God I shoot you on the spot, sooner than let this inhuman butchery continue."
Pushing the servant violently from him, he sprang forward and discharged his two other pistols. Two dragoons fell from their saddles.
"Holy virgin!" exclaimed the old serving man, "he will be the ruin of himself, of his family, of all of us. But it is too late to back out. Take good aim, Pedro, Cosmo." And the three men fired their carbines, while Jago and the muleteers, hastily following their example with their trabucos, half a dozen of the Spaniards bit the dust.
A short pause ensued. The shots from the thicket had come like a thunderbolt upon the inhuman dragoons and their victims. The latter stared for a few seconds wildly around them, as if uncertain whence came the unexpected succour. Their indecision was put an end to by Jago.
"Abajo con ellos!" shouted he in a voice of thunder. "Down with the dogs!"
And at the word, the Indians, rousing from their apathy, threw themselves upon the dead and wounded Spaniards, wrested their weapons from them in spite of the murderous blows of the other dragoons, and in their turn assumed the offensive. Don Manuel's blood was now thoroughly heated with the fight. Every shot that was fired at this elevation of ten thousand feet above the sea, rolled and rattled its echoes round the hills in long-continued thunder, and added to the din and excitement of the scene.
"Are you loaded?" cried the young nobleman, as he shot down the first man of a detachment which was advancing to attack the new foe in his ambush. Servants and muleteers followed his example, five more saddles were emptied, and immediately the Indians threw themselves upon the fallen, regardless of wounds, and seized their sabres and carbines. The fight grew more furious in proportion as the sides became more equal.