the left.  The command was obeyed:  rifle after rifle cracked off, always aimed at the foremost of the dragoons, and at every report a saddle was emptied.  Before we had all fired, Fanning and a dozen of his sharpest men had again loaded, and were by our side.  For nearly a minute the Mexicans remained, as if stupefied by our murderous fire, and uncertain whether to advance or retire; but as those who attempted the former, were invariably shot down, they at last began a retreat, which was soon converted into a rout.  We gave them a farewell volley, which eased a few more horses of their riders, and then got under cover again, to await what might next occur.

But the Mexican caballeros had no notion of coming up to the scratch a third time.  They kept patrolling about, some three or four hundred yards off, and firing volleys at us, which they were able to do with perfect impunity, as at that distance we did not think proper to return a shot.

The skirmish had lasted nearly three quarters of an hour.  Strange to say, we had not had a single man wounded, although at times the bullets had fallen about us as thick as hail.  We could not account for this.  Many of us had been hit by the balls, but a bruise or a graze of the skin was the worst consequence that had ensued.  We were in a fair way to deem ourselves invulnerable.

We were beginning to think that the fight was over for the day, when our videttes at the lower ford brought us the somewhat unpleasant intelligence that large masses of infantry were approaching the river, and would soon be in sight.  The words were hardly uttered, when the roll of the drums, and shrill squeak of the fifes became audible, and in a few minutes the head of the column of infantry, having crossed the ford, ascended the sloping bank, and defiled in the prairie opposite the island of muskeet trees.  As company after company appeared, we were able to form a pretty exact estimate of their numbers.  There were two battalions, together about a thousand men; and they brought a field-piece with them.

These were certainly rather long odds to be opposed to seventy-two men and three officers’ for it must be remembered that we had left twenty of our people at the mission, and in the island of trees.  Two battalions of infantry, and six squadrons of dragoons—­the latter, to be sure, disheartened and diminished by the loss of some fifty men, but nevertheless formidable opponents, now they were supported by the foot soldiers.  About twenty Mexicans to each of us.  It was getting past a joke.  We were all capital shots, and most of us, besides our rifles, had a brace of pistols in our belts; but what were seventy-five rifles, and five or six score of pistols against a thousand muskets and bayonets, two hundred and fifty dragoons, and a field-piece loaded with canister?  If the Mexicans had a spark of courage or soldiership about them, our fate was sealed.  But it was exactly this courage and soldiership, which we made sure would be wanting.