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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. It was the occasion of much bitter cursing that there should be delay until this was accomplished, and of one man's protesting seriously that it was, and had been, General Walker's endeavor, not to whip the greasers, but to get as many Americans killed in Nicaragua as possible,--he nourishing secret and implacable hatred against them for some cause. However, I think this judgment weak and improbable, though plausible enough from some points of view.
During the night there was some firing between our party and the enemy from under cover in front, with some few wounds, and one man on our side shot through the hat,--who thereupon, pulling off the injured head-piece, and looking at it gravely, declared he would always thenceforward wear his hat with a high crown; for, said he, had