ock. Zaldivar even now wished to spare
unnecessary bloodshed, and demanded only that the assassins of his
brother and countrymen should be given up for punishment. All others who
should surrender and become subjects of "Our Lord the King" should be
well treated. But the dogged Indians, like wounded wolves in their den,
stuck in their barricaded houses, and refused all terms of peace.

The rock was captured, but the town remained. A pueblo is a fortress in
itself; and now Zaldivar had to storm Acoma house by house, room by
room. The little _pedrero_ was dragged in front of the first row of
houses, and soon began to deliver its slow fire. As the adobe walls
crumbled under the steady battering of the stone cannon-balls, they only
formed great barricades of clay, which even our modern artillery would
not pierce; and each had to be carried separately at the point of the
sword. Some of the fallen houses caught fire from their own
_fogones_;[14] and soon a stifling smoke hung over the town, from which
issued the shrieks of women and babes and the defiant yells of the
warriors. The humane Zaldivar made every effort to save the women and
children, at great risk of self; but numbers perished beneath the
falling walls of their own houses.

[Illustration: RUINS OF CHURCH AT PECOS.

_See page 161._]

This fearful storming lasted until noon of January 24. Now and then
bands of warriors made sorties, and tried to cut their way through the
Spanish line. Many sprang in desperation over the cliff, and were dashed
to pieces at its foot; and two Indians who made that incredible leap
survived it as miraculously as had the four Spaniards in the earlier
massacre, and made their escape.

At last, at noon of the third day, the old men came forth to sue for
mercy, which was at once granted. The moment they surrendered, their
rebellion was forgotten and their treachery forgiven. There was no need
of further punishment. The ringleaders in the murder of Zaldivar's
brother were all dead, and so were nearly all the Navajo allies. It was
the most bloody struggle New Mexico ever saw. In this three days' fight
the Indians lost five hundred slain and many wounded; and of the
surviving Spaniards not one but bore to his grave many a ghastly scar as
mementos of Acoma. The town was so nearly destroyed that it had all to
be rebuilt; and the infinite labor with which the patient people had
brought up that cliff on their backs all the stones and timber and