Stifling their impatience as well as they could, the avenging party waited till the four hours had expired; then all set off on their mountain climb, though darkness would be coming on almost immediately. Half a mile from the top of the ridge, von Tempsky was seen to spring from his saddle and make a dash at some dark object that lay in the shelter of a rock. Before he had reached it, however, a scuffling, clattering sound arose near him, and a horse, saddled but riderless, struggled to his feet. The others halted. "Show a light some of you; I've got him," shouted von Tempsky. "But--why, the man's dead!" Jago dismounted, and, striking a light, revealed the pallid face of a Mexican, who lay with an arrow through his back. Von Tempsky, who had been the only one of the riders to notice the recumbent figure, had imagined it to be that of an Indian spy or sentinel, and had at once made a grab at his throat, only to find the body stiff and quite cold. "One more score against them," cried the doctor. "Ride on." They travelled all night and till long after daybreak, without meeting or seeing anyone; and at length Steel called another halt for a few hours. Presently, as he and von Tempsky sat chatting, the latter drew his attention to a body of mounted men riding slowly across their projected path, a couple of miles away. "We've got them this time," said Steel, jumping up. "Those are not Indians, Señor," said Jago. "Tch! Look at their spears, man." "I do. They are our Mexican lancers. There; do you not hear their bugle?" A faint note or two from some brass instrument was carried to them by the wind. "All right; mount," cried the doctor. "We'll have a look at them, anyway." They had not gone more than a few hundred yards, when the new-comers caught sight of them riding down the incline; they reined up and, waving their lances, greeted them with jubilant shouts. "Well--of all the scraggy-looking donkey-drivers!" exclaimed Steel in an aside, as they came up with the "lancers." There were about eighty of them, all more or less in rags, each man armed with a lance, a very rusty sabre, and a carbine. In their midst, two men held their lances aloft, each spear-point being decorated with the head of an Indian. The men were hearty-looking, happy-go-lucky ruffians, brave as need be, but woefully undisciplined, and out of gear generally. After one glance at them, von Tempsky no longer wondered that many an Englishman, Irishman, Scot, or Yankee who would think himself lucky if he ever rose to the rank of sergeant, at home, could here become a field-marshal or an admiral in half an hour. For the Mexico of those days was, like the southern republics, a happy hunting-ground for foreign soldiers of fortune. "And they send _these_ fellows to put down an Indian rising!" he muttered to the doctor; adding aloud, in Spanish: "Is that all you have killed? Who is your officer?"