yelled. "We've got to take that there Cimatario
hill."

A moment later Grays and brigands wheeled to the right and were off.
Back at the Casa Blanca Maximilian lowered his glasses. "They surely,
they surely are not--yes," he cried, "they _are_ going to attack
the Cimatario!"

Miramon smiled. "Then they are lunatics," he said. "Why, Your Highness
knows that we have five thousand of our best men on the Cimatario."

"Yes," Maximilian agreed uneasily, "but I thought I recognized the man
who leads those lunatics. Do you happen to know, general, how Tampico
fell?"

"Do not worry, sire," Miramon replied, willing to humor the prince, "I
will take our infantry to the Alameda and strengthen our reserve there,
should anything really happen."

Across the grassy plain raced the twelve hundred cavalry and the two
hundred outlaws. They raced to attack five thousand brave men who had
that morning dislodged ten thousand. Five thousand in the trenches
above, fourteen hundred in the open below, such were the odds of Empire
against Republic.

Grays and brigands drew rein under the Cimatario's west slope, and the
bugle sounded to dismount.

"But senor," Rodrigo protested, "don't we charge straight up?"

"And not have a man left when we do get up? Here Clem," Driscoll added
to Old Brothers and Sisters, the lieutenant colonel of the Grays, "you
circle round and up the other side with eight companies. Take all the
horses, but leave 'em back of the hill as you go. Don't that look like
the best scheme?"

The parson's cherubic features beamed. "Good-bye, Din," he said. "But
pshaw, I reckon--I reckon we'll be meeting up above." He referred,
however, to the top of the Cimatario.

Four companies and Rodrigo's band remained. These Driscoll spread out in
a skirmish line that made a long beaded chain around their side of the
hill. It was evidently an unfamiliar method, for the Imperialist
tiradores fired down on them contemptuously. But each time, while the
enemy above were reloading, the Grays and outlaws below were climbing a
few yards, each man of them individually, up from behind his own
particular rock. The Imperialists, it now appeared, had blundered
incomprehensibly, since they had actually taken away nearly all the
cannon captured on the Cimatario. But six-pound affairs from batteries
in the Alameda soon began to splinter and furrow around the climbing
men. One loosened boulder rolled and struck Doc Clayburn on the tip of
the shou