Stronghand by Gustave Aimard

Kidd had left the atepetl of the Papazos with rage in his heart, and revolved in his mind the most terrible schemes of vengeance. Not that the bandit had in his gangrened heart any sensitive chord which noble sentiment could cause to vibrate; to him it was a matter of the slightest importance that he had been publicly branded and expelled like the lowest scoundrel; humiliation glided over him without affecting him, and what most enraged him was to see the fortune dried up which Don Marcos de Niza had momentarily flashed before his greedy eyes, and which he hoped, by dissimulation and treachery, to invest in his capacious pocket in the shape of gold ounces. Now he could no longer dream of it; the slightest information he could henceforth accidentally pick up would not be sufficiently important to be paid for at the price given for the first.

There was something desperate in such an alternative for a man like the bandit; but what should he do? With all his other qualities, the adventurer combined the rather strange one, for him, of only being brave like the Coyotes, which only attack in pairs, and when they are certain of conquering; that is to say, he was an utter coward when compelled to meet an enemy face to face, although he would not hesitate to kill him from behind a bush. The adventurer did not deceive himself about this peculiarity of his character, and the mere idea of picking a quarrel with Stronghand caused him an instinctive terror, externally revealed by a general trembling.