“Then the stuff was off and she opened up in earnest.  They fought all right.  I was on my knee pumping lead for dear life, and as I threw my carbine down to refill the magazine, a bullet struck it in the heel of the magazine with sufficient force to knock me backward.  I thought I was hit for an instant, but it passed away in a moment.  When I tried to work the lever I saw that my carbine was ruined.  I called to the boys to notice a fellow with black whiskers who was shooting from behind his horse.  He would shoot over and under alternately.  I thought he was shooting at me.  I threw down my carbine and drew my six-shooter.  Just then I got a plug in the shoulder, and things got dizzy and dark.  It caught me an inch above the nipple, ranging upward,—­shooting from under, you see.  But some of the boys must have noticed him, for he decorated the scene badly leaded, when it was over.  I was unconscious for a few minutes, and when I came around the fight had ended.

“During the few brief moments that I was knocked out, our boys had closed in on them and mixed it with them at short range.  The thieves took to such horses as they could lay their hands on, and one fellow went no farther.  A six-shooter halted him at fifty yards.  The boys rounded up over a hundred horses, each one with a fiber grass halter on, besides killing over twenty wounded ones to put them out of their misery.

“It was a nasty fight.  Two of our own boys were killed and three were wounded.  But then you ought to have seen the other fellows; we took no prisoners that day.  Nine men lay dead.  Horses were dead and dying all around, and the wounded ones were crying in agony.

“This white man proved to be a typical dandy, a queer leader for such a gang.  He was dressed in buckskin throughout, while his sombrero was as fine as money could buy.  You can know it was a fine one, for it was sold for company prize money, and brought three hundred and fifty dollars.  He had nearly four thousand dollars on his person and in his saddle.  A belt which we found on him had eleven hundred in bills and six hundred in good old yellow gold.  The silver in the saddle was mixed, Mexican and American about equally.

“He had as fine a gold watch in his pocket as you ever saw, while his firearms and saddle were beauties.  He was a dandy all right, and a fine-looking man, over six feet tall, with swarthy complexion and hair like a raven’s wing.  He was too nice a man for the company he was in.  We looked the ‘Black Book’ over afterward for any description of him.  At that time there were over four thousand criminals and outlaws described in it, but there was no description that would fit him.  For this reason we supposed that he must live far in the interior of Mexico.

“Our saddle stock was brought up, and our wounded were bandaged as best they could be.  My wound was the worst, so they concluded to send me back.  One of the boys went with me, and we made a fifty-mile ride before we got medical attention.  While I was in the hospital I got my divvy of the prize money, something over four hundred dollars.”