starve us out; if we attempted to descend it, they could easily pick us
off; if any of us escaped back to the plain it would only be to incur
greater exposure if they pursued, or probably to perish of hunger
before we could reach any settlements. Thus the situation called for
no reflection--it was charge and dislodge them, or die.

Yelling to the boys below to close up on us, we three settled down to
the maintenance of the hottest fire we could deliver at the rifle
flashes above us, to cover their advance. Luckily there were many
boulders scattered along the grassy treeless slope they had to advance
across to reach the foot of the cliff. Thus by darting from one
boulder to another they had tolerable cover and were able to reach us
with no worse casualties than a comparatively slight flesh wound
through Manuel's side and the shooting away of Thornton's belt buckle.

Then we started the charge, led really by Thornton, who, active as a
goat, would have raced straight into the downpour of lead if I had not
continually restrained him. Three would scramble up fifteen or twenty
feet, and then drop behind boulders, while the other three kept up a
heavy fire on the summit; and then the rear rank would advance to a
line with their position, while they shelled the enemy. All the time a
rain of bullets was splashing on the rocks all about us, but luckily
for us they did not expose themselves enough to deliver an accurate
fire.

After we had made five or six such rushes, and were about half-way up,
we could hear the voices of what sounded like the larger part of the
band receding. Supposing they were swinging for the two side walls to
flank us we doubled our speed and presently dropped beneath the shelter
of a wall of rock about four feet high, from behind which our enemy had
been firing.

Two or three minutes earlier their fire had ceased, and what to make of
it we did not know. We found that an exposure of our hats on our
gun-muzzles drew no fire; yet, driven by sheer desperation, and
expecting that every man of us would get shot full of holes, we
simultaneously sprang over the rock, and dropped flat on the
summit--amid utter silence, about the most happily surprised lot of men
in all Mexico! The enemy had decamped. But where? And with what
purpose? And why had they not flanked us!

Careful scouting soon showed they had retired in a body down the trail
we must follow to reach Musquiz, as for nearly three miles the