"The old tower holds firm," said Ignacio, his mouth full of beef, as he plied a needle and fine deer's sinew for thread in the reparation of his leggings.
"Only the gale shakes out a tooth of the old hag's head," said his neighbour, on whom sundry fragments of the crumble had fallen.
"Ha!" ejaculated don Matasiete, abruptly, as he clapped his long hand to his head, and then clutched the object which had struck him there, and then rolled into the ashes. He had pulled it forth with amazing alacrity. "Since when has this tower been built with cartridges?"
"What!" was the general cry, as all, like the speaker, looked upward.
"I tell you that this fell on my head. If it rains more of the like we must dash out the fire, or we'll be blown higher than the eagle flies!"
Every man had drawn a weapon. Their ignorance of meteorology might be great or little, but cartridges do not come with Mexican rain often enough to be calmly accepted without an inquisition.
"The strangers!" cried the captain, prudently backing towards the wall at the point furthest from the ladder's end. "Have they come in among us?"
"Stuff! What man in his lightness of heart would leap thus into the wolf's throat?"
"That's all very well put, Ricardo," rejoined the leader. "But they may have preceded you, and not known that this is our lair. Just climb up and see if, by any chance, we are receiving uninvited guests."
Ricardo, who was singled out, was a burly rogue, but he did not accept this order. On the contrary he made a wry face and thrust his cheek out with his tongue, which signified "go and do it yourself." This incipient mutiny was clearly contagious, for all the bandits returned their commander's interrogative look with another, defiant, stupid, or complacent, pursuant to their natures.
Any child could have drawn the inference that the quarter whence cartridges were showered might logically be expected to furnish a gun or two. The figurative language of the western man ranking a packet of lead and ball, or arrows, as the case varies of its being a white or a red man who sends the message, as an equivalent for a challenge to mortal combat--each bandit so interpreted the accident.
"Poltroons!" cried Matasiete. "Is there room, save on the platform itself, for a troop of men? And would one man stand amid the lightning on this rocking tower top! I tell you, if there is a man there it will be in the nook where the ladder is suspended. One man! Well, where are my brave fighting cocks now?"