s
bent, with a sort of preternatural calmness and cleverness, upon the
business of parrying lance thrusts, aiming his revolver, and delivering
sabre cuts. It was a species of fighting intellection, at once prudent and
destructive. It was not the headlong, reckless, pugnacious rage of the old
Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian berserker. It was the practical, ready,
rational furor of the Latin race.

Presently he saw that two of his rancheros had been lanced, and that there
were but four left. A thrill of alarm, a commencement of panic, a desire
to save himself at all hazards, crisped his heart and half paralyzed his
energy. Remembering with perfect distinctness that four of his barrels
were empty, he would perhaps have tried to retreat at the risk of being
speared in the back, had he not at this critical moment been joined by
Texas Smith.

That instinctive, ferocious, and tireless fighter, while seeming to be
merely circling and curveting among his assailants, contrived to recharge
two barrels of his revolver, and was once more ready for business. Down
went one Apache; then the horse of another fell to reeling and crouching
in a sickly way; then a charge of half a dozen broke to right and left in
irresolute prancings. At sight of this friendly work Coronado drew a fresh
breath of courage, and executed his greatest feat yet of horsemanship and
swordsmanship. Spurring after and then past one of the wheeling braves, he
swept his sabre across the fellow's bare throat with a drawing stroke, and
half detached the scowling, furious, frightened head from the body.

There was a wide space of open ground before him immediately. The Apaches
know nothing of sabre work; not one of those present had ever before seen
such a blow or such an effect; they were not only panic-stricken, but
horror-stricken. For one moment, right between the staring antagonists, a
bloody corpse sat upright on a rearing horse, with its head fallen on one
shoulder and hanging by a gory muscle. The next moment it wilted, rolled
downward with outstretched arms, and collapsed upon the gravel, an inert
mass.

Texas Smith uttered a loud scream of tigerish delight. He had never, in
all his pugnacious and sanguinary life, looked upon anything so
fascinating. It seemed to him as if _his_ heaven--the savage Walhalla of
his Saxon or Danish berserker race--were opened before him. In his ecstasy
he waved his dirty, long fingers toward Coronado, and shouted, "Bully for
you,