"In less than a minute, quicker than I can tell you, sure enough, out they came again, only there was 'bout eighty of them this time. They made a dash at once, and their arrows fell like a shower of hail on the ground and against the wagon-sheets as the cusses swept by on their ponies. There wasn't anybody hurt, and our turn soon came. Just as they circled back, we poured it into them, killing six and wounding two. You see them Mexican guns had did some work that we didn't expect, and then we Americans felt better. Well, boys, them varmints made four charges like that on to us before we could get shet of them; but we killed as many as sixteen or eighteen, and they got mighty sick of it and quit; they had only knocked over one Mexican, and put an arrow into Thorpe's arm. "I was amused at little Paul all the time the scrimmage was going on. He stood up in the wagon where I'd put him, a looking out of the hole behind where the sheet was drawed together, and every time an Ingin was tumbled off his pony, he would clap his hands and yell, 'There goes another one, Uncle John!' "After their last charge, they rode off out of range, where they stood in little bunches talking to each other, holding some sort of a pow-wow. It riled us to see the darned cusses keep so far away from our rifles, because we wanted to lay a few more of them out, but was obliged to keep still and watch out for some new deviltry. We waited there until it was plumb night, not daring to move out yet; but we managed to boil our coffee and fry slap-jacks and meat. "The oxen kept up a bellowing and pawing around the corral, for they was desperate hungry and thirsty, hadn't had nothing since the night before; yet we couldn't help them any, as we didn't know whether we was shet of the Ingins or not. We staid, patient-like, for two or three hours more after dark to see what the Ingins was going to do, as while we sot round our little fire of buffalo-chips, smoking our pipes, we could still hear the red devils a howling and chanting, while they picked up their dead laying along the river-bottom.