Swinnerton seemed not disposed to argue the point. Perhaps he thought the hotter fire forward would drive the lad back. He walked unhesitatingly on. He did not stop at the federal trenches, though men and officers cheered him as he passed. But once he had clambered over the glacis, his and the boy’s were the only upright figures in a wide stretch of sloping, gravelly hillside. There was a sense of awful loneliness there for a moment; yet he did not hesitate. His calm decision seemed, without qualification, good to Swinnerton. He expected to be killed. No one could look out across the bullet-spattered front and hope for less. The air was filled with gruesome sounds--the screams and whines and whistles of deflected rifle-balls. He did not yearn for the shot that would be the end, and yet he did not shrink from it. The very proximity of death caused nervous little shivers along his spine and in the pit of his stomach, but no regret. He was tired of disappointment, and glad to end it. There was an unavoidable trifle of revengeful school-boy thought, “They’ll be sorry when I’m gone,” and another that brought real pleasure, “There can never be any joke about _this_ thing I am doing.” A gentle breeze was sweeping down the hill with the fire; it ruffled in his hair and cooled his temples. Yes, it was all pleasant, all good, all desirable. He had forgotten the boy who had so faithfully followed him. Swinnerton was just enough to see the terrible selfishness of what he had done. A cry came from behind. The lad was down, writhing and clawing at the gravelly soil, a bullet through his intestines. Calmness and self-satisfaction left Swinnerton between two pulse-throbs, and as he knelt beside the soldier and examined the wound, anger came to him--anger with himself at first, and then a bullet covered them with trash and another seared Swinnerton’s forehead like a red-hot iron. The rebels were firing at them both. His blood flowed down into his eyes. Blinded with this and rage, he rose and ran forward. He was no doubt absurd, but he was not unterrifying, as with lumbering gait he stumbled and ran straight on to the very muzzles of the firing-line. If he was grotesque, it was with the grotesquery of the bizarre and sinister figures of the first French Empire, and he was standing where vehemence commanded respect. “Stop that infernal firing!” he yelled, purple with rage, his arms pumping in frantic gesture. And then he broke into a perfect tirade of English and Spanish. “I’ll bring the American troops across and hunt every hound of you to his hole and shoot him like the dog he is,” he screamed. Your Mexican is not at his best in the psychology of bluff. Half the rifles were already raised. Swinnerton directed his words at the evil-faced little firing-director, who had lived a replete life with the reformed bandits of the _Rurales_, but who had yet to hear or see a thing like this.