Gracia stood and surveyed the scene for a moment, ignoring the hulking Bud with disdainful eyes. Then she snatched her hand indignantly away and ran to pick up a child. That was all, but Hooker knew what she thought of him. He passed through the house, hoping to discover where she had gone, but all he heard was her commanding voice as she silenced the wailing women, and, feeling somehow very much out of place, he stepped forth into the open. After all, for a man of his build, the open was best. Let the white-handed boys stay with the ladies--they understood their ways. XXII The superintendent's house stood on a low bench above the town, looking out over all the valley, but protected by a high hill behind, upon the summit of which was placed a mammoth black water-tank. In its architecture the _casa grande_ was an exact replica of a hot-country _hacienda_, a flat-roofed, one-storied square of adobe bricks, whitewashed to keep off the sun and presenting on three sides nothing but the dead walls of house and garden, with dense trees planted near for shade. Along the front was a long arcade, the _corredor_, graced by a series of massive arches which let in the light and air. Inside were low chambers and long passages; and, behind, the _patio_ and garden of orange and fig trees. Built for a sumptuous dwelling, it became in a moment a fort and, with men on the high hill by the tank, it was practically impregnable to direct assault. As Hooker stepped out onto the covered porch with his saddle-gun in his hand he became simply one more of a band of excited Americans, all armed and ready to defend the house to the last. Some were pacing back and forth in the _corredor_, others were hurrying up from the Mexican quarters with a last belated handful of women, but the major portion were out on the open bench, either gazing north and south at the scenes of the distant firing or engaging in a curio-mad scramble for any spent bullet that struck. The fighting, such as there was, was mostly up the cañon, where a large party of Sonoran miners had rushed in pursuit of the rebels. The firing down the cañon in the direction of Old Fortuna had died away to nothing, and for the moment if seemed as if the futile charge and retreat were the beginning and the end of the battle. A party of rebels had penetrated clear into the town, but it was apparently more by accident than intention, and they had been quick to beat a retreat. As for the main command of the _insurrectos_, they were reported at Chular, six miles up the railroad, where they had surrounded and taken a small mining camp and captured a train at the summit. The column to the south--the one which Hooker had encountered--had taken to the high hills west of the town, and, along the sky-line of the buttelike summits, they could now be seen in scattered bands making their way to the north.