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 munition-box, wide enough awake from the jolting he had been given in crossing the rocky arroyo.

Henderson was still a short distance ahead of the soldiers, far enough that he calculated, together with his distance from the road, that he might mount and hurry back to carry out the scheme that had come to him with more boldness than reason to recommend it. The soldiers were approaching one of the innumerable short curves in the road. Henderson rode hard, careless of noise, to gain the farther side of this sharp bend in the king's highway.

Felipe heard him galloping through the bosque.

"It is the soldiers," he said, turning to Helena, pistol in hand. "If your poor defenders should prove too weak, ride fast to San Gabriel, seek a refuge there."

"No," she returned, calmly. "If my brave defenders fall, I shall fall with them. Don Felipe, you carry two pistols; give me one of them."

Felipe's admiration for her courage lifted him like the news of victory. He put the pistol in her hand as Henderson burst out of the brush into a fire-cleared opening not fifty yards away.

"He is riding past us, he is turning into the road!" said Felipe, consternation smiting him coldly. "It cannot be that he is leaving us!" He rode from the cover of the bushes, caution aside in the face of this astounding action by his friend.

"He is charging them!" said Helena. "He is a thousand men!"