The signal given by the war-chief was heard by very few only, for the yells of the Tehuas drowned every other noise.  The enemy this time rushed up without any preliminary skirmishing, and the surprise was so sudden that the Queres were running back in every direction with their foes in close pursuit.  They had no time to gather or to hide.  Ere Tyope knew it, his men were far away in his rear, as well as a number of his enemies also.  To his left he noticed one of his tribe lying on the ground dead, and a Tehua standing with both feet on his back, cutting and jerking at the scalp of the dead man.  Tyope was alone, for the medicine-man had fled.  The Tehua was so intent upon securing the trophy that he had not seen Tyope, and he could easily have killed him.  But hurried footsteps, many voices, and the shaking of bushes in front showed plainly that quite a numerous body of Tehuas was rapidly coming toward him.  His own life was too precious in this hour of terrible need to permit exposure for the sake of killing one enemy, so he turned about softly on his knees.  The Tehua still did not pay any attention to him, and now the temptation was too great; he quickly placed an arrow on the string and sent the shaft, thanks to the short distance, between the ribs of the unsuspecting foe.  Then with a yell of triumph and defiance he darted off in the direction whither his men had scattered.

He had been noticed by some of the Tehuas who were coming up from the west, and without delay they followed in pursuit.  But it was not easy to overtake a man like Tyope when fleeing for life.  The powerful onslaught of the Tehuas had scattered the Queres in such a manner that friend and foe were intermingled in the forest, and it was not safe for the pursuers to shoot at the fugitives, who were only occasionally visible between tree-trunks and bushes, for the arrow might have struck a friend.

Tyope ran so fast that he soon left his pursuers far behind him.  When he noticed that their shouting sounded more distant, he stopped, crouched under a bush that grew near the foot of a large tree, and listened and peered again.  He was breathless from the rapid flight, and his heart throbbed so violently at first that he could not clearly distinguish sound from sound.  At last he grew quiet, and now heard the din that seemed to fill the entire forest in every direction except the north.  It was nearest toward the east and south, and there the fight seemed to concentrate.  Above the shouting, yelling, whooping, sounded the piercing war-whistle.  There could be no thought of still winning anything like success, for the day was irretrievably, disastrously lost.  To save as many of the survivors as possible was all that could be done.  Tyope would have raved, had it been of any avail.  This terrible failure, he saw clearly, ruined his prospects forever.  He wished to die, and despair began for the first time in his life to fill his heart.