“What a brave, noble, intelligent man?” thought Aunt Maria.  “If they were only all like him!”

This business took up five minutes.  Coronado had just finished his round when a loud yell was raised by the Apaches, and twenty or thirty of them started at full speed down the trail by which the caravan had come.  Looking for the cause of this stampede, the emigrants beheld, nearly half a mile away, a single horseman rushing to encounter a score.  It was Texas Smith, making an apparently hopeless rush to burst through the environment of Parthians and reach the train.

“Shall we make a sally to save him?” demanded Coronado, glancing at Thurstane.

The officer hesitated; to divide his small army would be perilous; the Apaches would attack on all sides and with advantage.

But the sight of one man so overmatched was too much for him, and with a great throb of chivalrous blood in his heart, he shouted, “Charge!”

CHAPTER XI.

An hour before the attack Texas Smith had ridden off to stalk a deer; but the animal being in good racing condition in consequence of the thin fare of this sterile region, the hunting bout had miscarried; and our desperado was returning unladen toward the train when he heard the distant charging yell of the Apaches.

Scattered over the plateau which he was traversing, there were a few thickets of mesquite, with here and there a fantastic butte of sandstone.  By dodging from one of these covers to another, he arrived undiscovered at a point whence he could see the caravan and the curveting melee which surrounded it.  He was nearly half a mile from his comrades and over a quarter of a mile from his nearest enemies.

What should he do?  If he made a rush, he would probably be overpowered and either killed instantly or carried off for torture.  If he waited until night for a chance to sneak into camp, the wandering redskins would be pretty apt to surprise him in the darkness, and there would be small chance indeed of escaping with his hair.  It was a nasty situation; but Texas, accustomed to perils, was as brave as he was wicked; and he looked his darkling fate in the face with admirable coolness and intelligence.  His decision was to wait a favorable moment, and when it came, charge for life.

When he perceived that the mass of the Indians had gathered on the trail between the wagons and the canon, he concluded that his chance had arrived; and with teeth grimly set, rifle balanced across his saddle-bow, revolver slung to his wrist, he started in silence and at full speed on his almost hopeless rush.  If you will cease to consider the man as a modern bushwhacker, and invest him temporarily with the character, ennobled by time, of a borderer of the Scottish marches, you will be able to feel some sympathy for him in his audacious enterprise.