Dismounting here, our courier went into the house to communicate with
Colonel O'Neal, the commander of the detachment,--leaving it to us
either to tie up, and lie where we were until morning, or pass farther
up the road, where Captain Finney's rangers were stationed. I chose to
go forward and hear the rangers' story, who, we were told, had had a
slight brush with the enemy in the beginning of the night.
After riding near quarter of a mile, I came to another _adobe_ building
on the roadside, occupied by a small party, and forming Colonel O'Neal's
advanced post, at the distance of four hundred yards or more from
Obraja. Here they told me that Captain Finney's company, whilst riding
into Obraja early in the night, had been hotly fired upon, and Captain
Finney himself was brought off struck in the breast, wounded mortally.
The riflemen had as yet made no attack, but awaited daylight. The number
of the enemy was not known; though rumor placed it between one thousand
and fifteen hundred. Whatever it was, they were apprehensive; for
throughout the night we heard them barricading the town with great hurry
and clatter; and it gave us sad discomfort to think that in the morning
there would be these walls to climb before our men could get at them.
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