The troop appeared over the top of the slope, cloaked men, with gauze masks covering their faces. A shot sounded, there was a flash of steel; the bandits came scrambling down the slope to engage with Doña Beatrice's bodyguard. Dominica thought there were no more than six of them, but she could not be sure in the _mêlée_. Her heart beat fast, but there was something about this battle that made her draw her brows together, and look frowningly. There were pistol shots, but no man was wounded; swords flashed, but no man was cut down. Doña Beatrice's fan stopped waving. Her eyes were narrow all at once, and behind them her brain was moving quickly. She sat forward with a hand on the side of the coach, watching this odd fray. Dominica knew a sudden, inexplicable fear. She brought her horse up close to the coach. "Señora--aunt--what is this?" she asked urgently. "That is just what I am asking myself," said Doña Beatrice calmly. "If these men are brigands they act as no brigands did that I ever heard of." A couple of the masked men spurred up to the coach; a hand seized Dominica's bridle. She slashed at the masked face with her whip; the leather thong cut the mask across, and revealed an unshaven chin, a thick nose, and the fast rising weal of the whip-lash. The whip was wrested from Dominica's hand. She cried out to her guards:--"To me! To me, cravens!" They were sheepish, laying down their arms, as though worsted in the fight. Yet there was not a man among them who had taken a hurt. Dominica drove her heel in hard, struck at the hand on her bridle. Her horse plunged forward, but her captor jerked it up. "Help me, cowards!" Dominica cried furiously. Doña Beatrice had half risen from her seat as though she would descend from the coach. She sank slowly back now, her eyes fixed under their drooping lids on a masked horseman who stood a little apart from the rest. She watched him turn his head to give an order to one of the men. She could not hear his voice, but she had no need to hear it. A woman should know her own son. Her hand felt for her fan. Thoughtfully she looked at her niece, being forced on up the slope. A very infamous proceeding. She was surprised that Diego should think of such a scheme. Her shoulders shook slightly; meditatively she bit one finger-nail. Should she put a stop to it or no? She had no doubt that a word from her would subdue Don Diego, but should that word be spoken? This was a crude performance, by her standards, but she admitted she could have thought of no surer way of reducing her niece to obedience. She slightly raised her ample shoulders in a gesture of fatalism. Let Don Diego do as he chose: a girl never liked a man less for being shown the strong hand. She turned her attention to her screaming tirewoman. "I beg you will be quiet," she said. "We are not attacked, and you do no good by that screeching." Old Carmelita pointed a shaking finger. "Señora, señora, they bear off the señorita!"