A horseman galloped up to our division, a great, swarthy, fierce-looking man, bearded like the pard.  This man did not act like a scared person.  One glance at the frightened faces of his countrymen sufficed to enlighten and also to enrage him.

“Senores,” he said, “I perceive you are anxious and ready for a fight.  I hope the Indians will accommodate us, as we are greatly in need of a little sport.  It may happen that some of you will lose your scalps, and I hope that it is not you, Senor Felipe Morales.  I should be very sorry for your poor old mother and your crippled sister, for who will support them if you should fail them?  As for you, Senor Juan, it does not matter much if you never again breathe the air of New Mexico.  Your young little wife has not yet had an opportunity to know you fully, anyway, and your cousin, the strapping Don Isidro Chavez, will surely take the best care of her.  They say he calls on her daily to inquire after her welfare.  Senor Cuzco Gonzales, as you might be unlucky enough to leave your bones on this prairie, I would advise you to make me heir to your garden of chile peppers.  To be sure, I never saw a more tempting crop!  Mayhap you will have no further use for chile, as the Indians are likely to heat your belly with hot coals, in lieu of peppers.”

Then he called for the cook.  “Senor Doctor,” he said, “prepare the medicine for this man, who is too sick to load a musket properly, and had to be shown how to do so by a little gringo, as I observed a while ago.  Hold him, Senores.”  And they held him down while the cook administered the medicine, forcing it down his unwilling throat.  The medicine was compounded from salt, and the prescribed dose was a handful of it dissolved in a tin cupful of water.  This seemed to revive the patient’s faltering spirit wonderfully.  The cook, a half-witted fellow, was another man who seemed to have no fear.  His eyes shone wickedly and he was stripped for the fight.  A red bandanna kerchief tied around his head, he glided stealthily about, thirsty for Indian blood as any wolf.  They told me that his mother and sister had died at the hands of the cruel Apaches.

To me the rider said, “Senor Americanito, I know your gun is loaded right and is ready to shoot straight.  Look you, if you plant a bullet just below an Indian’s navel, you will see him do a double somersault, which is more wonderful to behold than any circus performance you ever saw.”

Here was a man good to see, a descendant of the famous Don Fernando Cortez, conquistador, and molded on the lines of Pizarro, the wily conqueror of Peru, and he heartened our crew amazingly.  He exhorted the men to be brave and fight like Spaniards, and he prayed to the saints to preserve us; and piously remembering his enemies, he called on the devil to preserve the Indians.  Such zealous devotion found merited favor with the blessed saints in Heaven, for they granted his prayer, and the Indians did not attack us that day.