tled past his head, and cut the grass at his feet
with that peculiar "zip-zip" so well remembered by the soldier who has
passed the ordeal of a battle.

There was something in it awfully grand--awful even to us; no wonder
that it awed our enemies.

I was about to call upon Lincoln to fall back and shelter himself, when
I saw him throw up his rifle to the level. The next instant he dropped
the butt to the ground with a gesture of disappointment. A moment
after, the manoeuvre was repeated with a similar result, and I could
hear the hunter gritting his teeth.

"The cowardly skunks!" muttered he; "they keep a-gwine like a bull's
tail in fly-time."

In fact, every time Lincoln brought his piece to a level, the
guerilleros ducked, until not a head could be seen.

"They ain't as good as thar own dogs," continued the hunter, turning
away from the cliff. "If we hed a lot of loose rocks, Cap'n, we mout
keep them down thar till doomsday."

A movement was now visible among the guerilleros. About one-half of the
party were seen to mount their horses and gallop off up the creek.

"They're gone round by the ford," said Raoul: "it's not over a mile and
a half. They can cross with their horses there and will be on us in
half an hour."

What was to be done? There was no timber to hide us now--no chaparral.
The country behind the cliff was a sloping table, with here and there a
stunted palm-tree or a bunch of "Spanish bayonet" (_Yucca
angustifolia_). This would be no shelter, for from the point we
occupied, the most elevated on the ridge, we could have descried an
object of human size five miles off. At that distance from us the woods
began; but could we reach them before our pursuers would overtake us?

Had the guerilleros all gone off by the ford we should have returned to
the creek bottom, but a party remained below, and we were cut off from
our former hiding-place. We must therefore strike for the woods.

But it was necessary first to decoy the party below, otherwise they
would be after us before the others, and experience had taught us that
these Mexicans could run like hares.

This was accomplished by an old Indian trick that both Lincoln and
myself had practised before. It would not have "fooled" a Texan Ranger,
but it succeeded handsomely with the guerilleros.

We first threw ourselves on the ground in such a position that only our
heads could be seen by the enemy, who still kept blazing away from their
es