This request not being heeded, he made a clumsy punch with his bayonet and brought the blood. The warrior uttered a grunt of pain, cast a surprised angry stare at the shaveling of a Paddy, and thrust with his lance. But he was probably weak and faint; the weapon merely tore the uniform. Sweeny instantly fired, and brought down another Apache, quite accidentally. Then, banging his mule with his heels, he splashed up to Thurstane with the explanation, "Liftinant, they're the same bloody naygurs. Wan av um made a poke at me, Liftinant." "Load your beece!" ordered Sergeant Meyer sternly, "und face the enemy." By this time there was a fierce confusion of plungings and outcries. Then came a hiss of arrows, followed instantaneously by the scream of a wounded man, the report of several muskets, a pinging of balls, more yells of wounded, and the splash of an Apache in the water. The little streamlet, lately all crystal and sunshine, was now turbid and bloody. The giant portals of the cañon, although more than a mile distant, sent back echoes of the musketry. Another battle rendered more horrible the stark, eternal horror of the desert. "This way!" Thurstane continued to shout. "Forward, you women; up the hill with you. Steady, men. Face the enemy. Don't throw away a shot. Steady with the firing. Steady!" The hostile parties were already thirty or forty yards apart; and the emigrants, drawing loosely up the slope, were increasing the distance. Manga Colorada spurred to the front of his people, shaking his lance and yelling for a charge. Only half a dozen followed him; his horse fell almost immediately under a rifle ball; one of the braves picked up the chief and bore him away; the rest dispersed, prancing and curveting. The opportunity for mingling with the emigrants and destroying them in a series of single combats was lost. Evidently the Apaches, and their mustangs still more, were unfit for fight. The forty-eight hours of hunger and thirst, and the prodigious burst of one hundred and twenty miles up and down rugged terraces, had nearly exhausted their spirits as well as their strength, and left them incapable of the furious activity necessary in a cavalry battle. The most remarkable proof of their physical and moral debilitation was that in all this mêlée not more than a dozen of them had discharged an arrow. If they would not attack they must retreat, and that speedily. At fifty yards' range, armed only with bows and spears, they were at the mercy of riflemen and could stand only to be slaughtered. There was a hasty flight, scurrying zigzag, right and left, rearing and plunging, spurring the last caper out of their mustangs, the whole troop spreading widely, a hundred marks and no good one. Nevertheless Texas Smith's miraculous aim brought down first a warrior and then a horse.