I had hopes that the coward might become separated from the fair form he was using as a shield. Six inches would have satisfied me: for his last brutal innuendo proclaimed a terrible emergency; and with six inches of his carcase clear I should have risked the shot. But, no! He did not allow me even this trifling chance. He seemed to divine my intent; and inch by inch, keeping her body straight between us--O God, to see her in that swarth embrace!--he sidled behind the stone! The other followed his example, taking Dolores; and before another word could be spoken, both robbers and captives had passed out of sight! The instant after, half a score of hats started suddenly out of the bushes, that skirted the edge of the cliff; and we were saluted by a volley from a like number of _escopetas_. A rifleman, standing in the door by my side, threw up his arms with a shriek, and fell forward upon the stoup. As I caught hold, to hinder him from going over the cliff, something hot came spurting against my cheek. It was the life-blood of my comrade, who had been killed by the bullet of an escopeta. I saw that I was dealing with a dead body; and desisted from the struggle to sustain it. It glided from my grasp, and fell with a heavy plash upon the swift water below! My men were by this time more than half mad. It needed not the death of their comrade to excite them to frantic action. The sight of the captive ladies; the disappointment caused by our being unable to rescue them--after supposing ourselves sure of it--and perhaps, as much as anything else, the trick that had been played upon them--rendered one and all thirsty for vengeance. I need not say that I shared this thirst--so much that I no longer cared for consequences, and had lost even the perception of danger. I stood upon the projecting doorstep; not looking after the body which had gone below, but across the chasm, in hopes of getting sight of a brigand. Any one now: since I knew there was not much chance of again seeing their chief. I heeded not the stray shots that came hurtling around my head; and, in all likelihood, one would have consigned me to a fate, similar to what had befallen my comrade, had I been left to a much longer indulgence in my reckless mood. But I was not. A strong arm seizing me from behind--it was that of my sergeant--drew me back within the cabin; whose thick wooden walls were proof against the bullets of either carbine, or _escopeta_. CHAPTER THIRTY NINE. GUIDED BY A RENEGADE. For some seconds there was silence in our midst. It was the silence of men who have nothing to say to one another. There was no need for any one to explain what had passed. All saw, and too clearly, that we had been chicaned; and that the wretched curs who had "sold" us, were as completely beyond our reach, as if twenty miles lay between us and them!