United States or Benin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A word concerning the Ciboleros may not be uninteresting. Every year, large parties of Mexicans, some with mules, others with ox-carts, drive out into these prairies to procure for their families a season's supply of buffalo beef. They hunt chiefly on horseback, with bow and arrow, or lance, and sometimes the fusil, whereby they soon load their carts and mules.
Some were killed and others taken prisoners, who were hanged next day at St. Jean-du-Gard. A reward of five hundred louis d'or was advertised for the leader, who was shortly after tracked to his hiding-place in a cavern situated between Anduze and Alais, and was there shot, but not until after he had killed three soldiers with his fusil.
Our brave commander, without asking any body to follow him, galloped up close to them, and with his fusil knocked one of them off his horse, killed the second with his pistol, and the third ran away; and thus ended our fight; but we had this misfortune attending it, viz. that all our mutton that we had in chase got away.
My present station was loftier, and how deeply I might sink into this gulf, how far the fall and the concussion would bereave me of my presence of mind, I could not determine. This hesitation vanished, and, placing my tomahawk and fusil upon the ground, I prepared to leap. This purpose was suspended, in the moment of its execution, by a faint sound, heard from the quarter whence I had come.
You talk one minute about using your fusil to shoot me, and I am not afraid. Then you say you throw me to the crocodile, and still I am not afraid." "Then look ye here," said Smithers, "you just give me that little pistol thing you were going to pull out." "What! Sir, I re-fuse." Smithers stuck the mouth of his rifle against the stranger's breast-bone, and pressed upon it heavily.
Then everything but his moccasins disappeared as he crawled into the cart and pulled at the gun to extricate it. "Is it loaded?" I asked. "Oui, bien charge; you'll kill, mon bourgeois; yes, you'll kill c'est un bon fusil." I handed him my rifle and rode forward to Shaw. "Are you ready?" he asked. "Come on," said I.
I scarce knew in what manner to receive them; but found to draw ourselves in a close line was the only way; so we formed in a moment; but, that we might not have too much interval, I ordered, that only every other man should fire; and that the others, who had not fired, should stand ready to give them a second volley immediately, if they continued to advance upon us; and that then those who had fired at first, should not pretend to load their fusils again, but stand ready, with every one a pistol, for we were all armed with a fusil and a pair of pistols each man; so we were, by this method, able to fire six vollies, half of us at a time; however, at present we had no necessity; for, upon firing the first volley, the enemy made a full stop, being terrified, as well with the noise as with the fire; four of them being shot in the head, dropped; several others were wounded, and went bleeding off, as we could see by the snow.
I was really saved by some Indians, who took me for a spirit up aloft there in the moonlight and spread the alarm. The first white man they brought me was a wretched drunkard known to the boys as 'Old Fusil, or 'Fusel Oil, who went into delirium tremens at the sight of me. Well, who do you suppose he turned out to be? Flint! Flint played out and ruined!
Cinq-Mars had been little alarmed at this menacing gesture, contenting himself with tightening the reins of his horse and bringing the spurs close to his sides, knowing that with a single leap of the nimble animal he should be carried behind the wall of a hut which stood near by, and should thus be sheltered from the Spanish fusil before the operation of the fork and match could be completed.
The taste was all that he had anticipated, and melted iron could hardly have been more painful than that first torture of cold, fusil acid. Gulping it down, he was willing to congratulate himself on his endurance and wisdom, his very heroism in undertaking that deadly specific.
Word Of The Day