I bent my head and drove my spurs into my horse. I did not know where he was carrying me. My eyes were shut with tears, and with the horror of what I had witnessed. I was reckless, mad, for the first time in my life, filled with hate against my fellow-men. I rode a hundred yards before I heard the scout at my side shouting, “To the right, Captain, to the right.” At the word I pulled on my rein, and we turned into the Plaza. The scout was McGraw, the Kansas cowboy, who had halted Aiken and myself the day we first met with the filibusters. He was shooting from the saddle as steadily as other men would shoot with a rest, and each time he fired, he laughed. The laugh brought me back to the desperate need of our mission. I tricked myself into believing that Laguerre was not seriously wounded. I persuaded myself that by bringing him aid quickly I was rendering him as good service as I might have given had I remained at his side. I shut out the picture of him, faint and bleeding, and opened my eyes to the work before us. We were like the lost dogs on a race-course that run between lines of hooting men. On every side we were assailed with cries. Even the voices of women mocked at us. Men sprang at my bridle, and my horse rode them down. They shot at us from the doors of the cafes, from either curbstone. As we passed the barracks even the men of my own native regiment raised their rifles and fired. The nearest gun was at the end of the Calle Bogran, and we raced down it, each with his revolver cocked, and held in front of him. But before we reached the outpost I saw the men who formed it, pushing their way toward us, bunched about their gatling with their clubbed rifles warding off the blows of a mob that struck at them from every side. They were ignorant of what had transpired; they did not know who was, or who was not their official enemy, and they were unwilling to fire upon the people, who a moment before, before the flag of Alvarez had risen on Pecachua, had been their friends and comrades. These friends now beset them like a pack of wolves. They hung upon their flanks and stabbed at them from the front and rear. The air was filled with broken tiles from the roofs, and with flying paving-stones. When the men saw us they raised a broken cheer. “Open that gun on them!” I shouted. “Clear the street, and push your gun to the palace. Laguerre is there. Kill every man in this street if you have to, but get to the palace.” The officer in charge fought his way to my side. He was covered with sweat and blood. He made a path for himself with his bare arms. “What in hell does this mean, Macklin?” he shouted. “Who are we fighting?” “You are fighting every native you see,” I ordered. “Let loose up this street. Get to the palace!” I rode on to the rear of the gun, and as McGraw and I raced on toward the next post, we heard it stabbing the air with short, vicious blows.