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As our line advanced, it would suddenly come upon a line of gray-coated rebels, lying upon the ground, covered with dried leaves, and concealed by the chapparal, when the rebels would rise, deliver a murderous fire, and retire.
A general halt was made, and the pursuers waited until reinforcements should come up. The whole garrison turned out, and the chapparal was surrounded, and at length entered. But no Indians could be found, though the tracks of their animals led through the thicket in every direction. After beating about for several hours, Roblado and his troopers returned to the Presidio. Garcia was dead.
For such a short stretch I can run like a deer: I shall not be overtaken. When I return I shall tell you how to act. "See! Don Juan!" he continued, grasping the ranchero by the arm, and drawing him forward to the edge of the chapparal. "It is he! by Heaven, it is he!" Carlos pointed to the azotea of the Presidio, where the head and shoulders of a man were seen above the line of the parapet.
He had such confidence in the steed he bestrode, that he knew he could escape before the eyes of his pursuers, and need not have hidden himself in the chapparal. As he rode into the ambuscade he was thinking no longer of his own safety, but of that of Don Juan and his party. Their critical situation suddenly came before his mind. How were they to escape?
When Crittenden took position, his skirmishers were advanced across the open field to the edge of the timber in front. This dense growth, called in the reports "chapparal" and "jungle," covered both slopes of a hollow, which was threaded by a rivulet with muddy borders, and was the scene of many a bloody repulse the day before, in the repeated assaults upon Prentiss.
Passing this, they emerged into the open country; and then, following an unfrequented path through the chapparal, a few hundred yards brought them to a small mud rancho, which they entered. In a few minutes after a carreta, in which sat a peon, was driven up to the door, and stopped there. The poblana, leading the girl by the hand, came out of the house, and both mounted into the carreta.
A swift glance at their surroundings showed Jack that they had floated into a sort of natural basin amid some wild, bare-looking hills. The banks of this basin were clothed with a sort of wild oat and interspersed with a small blue wild flower. Here and there were clumps of chapparal.
A crowd was assembled to see her discomfiture. But, to the intense disappointment of the camp, Jinny, after quietly surveying the stranger, uttered a sardonic bray, and ambled away to the little cemetery on the hill, whose tangled chapparal effectually prevented all pursuit by her skilled antagonist.
Antonio then took the trail, and guided them through the chapparal; not as they had come to La Nina, but by a path that led to the upper plain by another pass in the cliffs. From a point in this pass they obtained a distant view of the chapparal and the plain beyond.
"If you and Gene will join me sometime when I have a week to spare, we will go in there, clean up the gang and burn the hair off the roots of the chapparal what? I've hinted to Rebstock he could get ready for something like that." "Tell us about that fight, Gordon." "I will if you will give me something to eat and have this horse taken care of.
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