It was on one night in the early summer, having bid farewell to Otomie
and taking my son with me, for he was now of an age when, according to
the Indian customs, lads are brought face to face with the dangers of
battle, that I despatched the appointed companies to their stations on
the brow of the precipice, and sallied into the darksome mouth of the
pass with the few hundred men who were left to me. I knew by my spies
that the Spaniards who were encamped on the further side would attempt
its passage an hour before the daylight, trusting to finding me asleep.
And sure enough, on the following morning, so early that the first rays
of the sun had not yet stained the lofty snows of the volcan Xaca that
towered behind us, a distant murmuring which echoed through the silence
of the night told me that the enemy had begun his march. I moved down
the pass to meet him easily enough; there was no stone in it that was
not known to me and my men. But with the Spaniards it was otherwise,
for many of them were mounted, and moreover they dragged with them
two carronades. Time upon time these heavy guns remained fast in the
boulder-strewn roadway, for in the darkness the slaves who drew them
could find no places for the wheels to run on, till in the end
the captains of the army, unwilling to risk a fight at so great a
disadvantage, ordered them to halt until the day broke.
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