Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/227

 rampart, which gave them some chance to sight our men behind the smaller rocks in front, and blazed away for all they were worth—they were trying to make a demonstration to engage our attention, while the other part suddenly slipped down and around our right flank, and out through the rocks which had so effectively sheltered the retreat of the one who had so nearly succeeded in getting away earlier in the morning. Their motives were divined, and the move was frustrated; our men rushed to the attack like furies, each seeming to be anxious to engage the enemy at close quarters. Six or seven of the enemy were killed in a space not twenty-five feet square, and the rest driven back within the cave, more or less wounded.

Although there was a fearful din from the yells, groans, wails of the squaws within the fortress, and the re-echoing of volleys from the walls of the cañon, our command behaved admirably, and obeyed its orders to the letter. The second line never budged from its place, and well it was that it had stayed just there. One of the charging party, seeing that so much attention was converged upon our right, had slipped down unnoticed from the rampart, and made his way to the space between our two lines, and had sprung to the top of a huge boulder, and there had begun his war-whoop, as a token of encouragement to those still behind. I imagine that he was not aware of our second line, and thought that once in our rear, ensconced in a convenient nook in the rocks, he could keep us busy by picking us off at his leisure. His chant was never finished; it was at once his song of glory and his death song; he had broken through our line of fire only to meet a far more cruel death. Twenty carbines were gleaming in the sunlight just flushing the cliffs; forty eyes were sighting along the barrels. The Apache looked into the eyes of his enemies, and in not one did he see the slightest sign of mercy; he tried to say something; what it was we never could tell. "No! No! soldados!" in broken Spanish, was all we could make out before the resounding volley had released another soul from its earthly casket, and let the bleeding corpse fall to the ground as limp as a wet moccasin. He was really a handsome warrior; tall, well-proportioned, finely muscled, and with a bold, manly countenance; "shot to death" was the verdict of all who paused to look upon him, but that didn't half express the state of the case; I have never seen a man more thoroughly shot to pieces than was this one; every