George Henty - In the Hands of the Cave-Dwellers стр 8.

"Are you all right, Juan?" he shouted.

The answer came from rocks on the other side. "Yes; the ball aimed at me has killed my horse, but I am unhurt. Lopez is killed."

For some time shots were fired at intervals. Juan shouted to the vaqueros not to use their pistols.

"You would have no chance of hitting them," he said, "and they would only pick you off one by one. Lie quiet for the present; keep your shots till they come to close quarters. Now, Will," he said in English, "you watch the rocks above me, and I will watch those above you. Mark, if you can, where a shot is fired; lie with your rifle pointed at it until the fellow stands up to fire again, and then let him have it."

Four shots were fired almost together from Will's side, the assailants aiming in the direction from which the voice had come, but Will had no doubt that Juan had foreseen this and was in shelter when he spoke. Presently he saw a puff of smoke shoot out from the side of a large rock. He brought his rifle to bear upon it and watched intently. Three minutes later a head appeared cautiously round the rock, then a shoulder appeared, and a rifle was pointed towards the spot behind which he had first sheltered. He fired, there was a sharp scream, and the rifle went clattering down, exploding as it fell. The moment that he had fired, Will drew back into the shelter of the stone. Two other shots rang out, and the balls cut up and scattered the small pebbles on which he had been lying. He was able to observe, however, the position of one of his assailants. While he was reloading he heard the crack of Juan's rifle, followed by an exclamation of satisfaction.

"That is two of them, Will. They will soon get tired of this game."

The distances were so short, in fact, that it was almost impossible for even an indifferent shot to miss his aim when he once caught sight of the head of an enemy. Presently another shot struck the rock close to Will. It was fired some paces from the stone that he was watching, and showed that the assailants were using the same tactics that he had done, and were shifting their positions after firing. He moved a few yards away, and did not answer to the next two or three shots that were fired.

"He is done for," he heard one of the men on the other side of the ravine say. They were but some fifty feet away from him, and it was, therefore, easy to catch their words as they shouted from one to the other.

"Well, then, go down and attack the man we want," another voice said. "No one but the Englishman had a rifle over there, so you are quite safe."

"You had better come and show us the way. We did not bargain for this sort of thing. You said we should settle it all in one volley."

"So you would have done, you fools, if you could have shot straight. Who could have supposed that you were all going to miss at that distance. Why, a child of ten years old would have fired straighter. However, I am ready to lead the way. You, over there, make a rush when we do."

Will marked the exact position of the speaker. It was behind a large boulder some fifteen yards up the hill and as much ahead of him; he saw that to join the men who had been firing he would have to pass an open space between that and some other large masses of rock, and he laid his sights on that spot. The speaker, who was evidently confident that he was killed, and that therefore there was no danger of a shot being fired at him while he moved to join the others, appeared half a minute later. He was stooping, and held a pistol in each hand. The moment his body appeared in the line of fire Will pressed the trigger, and the man rolled

over like a log. A cry of dismay burst from the hillside above Harland, where the men had evidently been watching also for their leader to join his comrades and give the signal for a rush.

"I have shot Melos, Juan!" Will shouted. "At least if he is, as you suppose, their leader."

"Well done, indeed! We shall have no difficulty with the rest of them if their paymaster is dead; they will think of nothing now but saving their own wretched lives."

The parties on the opposite sides of the ravine now shouted to each other. Two or three of them urged their companions to make a general rush, but the majority were altogether against this.

"Why should we throw away our lives?" one said. "They have all got pistols, and even if we got the better of them, four or five of us would be likely to go down before we had finished with them. Indeed, they would shoot us down directly we showed ourselves, and half of us would never reach the bottom."

There was a silence which showed that there was a general feeling that he was right. Then the same speaker went on:

"Caballeros, we have been cruelly misled; we are poor men, and have been led into this. Two of us have been killed; we ask your mercy."

As he ceased there was a general cry of "Mercy! mercy!"

"You dogs!" Juan shouted back, "if it were not that all of your lives are not worth as much as a drop of the honest blood of those with me, I would not move from here until I had put an end to the last of you. However, you have had a lesson now. Come down one at a time into the road. When you get there drop your pistols and knives to the ground, and then go down the hill. When one man has started let the next man come down. How many are there of you?"