It was the way of their brutal leader to attack his objectives such a time. For, he reasoned, that at such an hour a raid was never expected, and those who might attempt retaliation were at their most unready. Sleep robbed a man of his defenses and in the few seconds it took him to realize his danger, a bullet or a blade could dispatch him with a simplicity that placed every advantage with the attacker. Matador and eighteen of his men went into the village on foot, leaving two to attend the horses. There were not more than a dozen buildings in the settlement, most of them rude shacks providing squalid living quarters for the poor peasants who sweated to earn a living from the arid soil to the west. One, a little larger, was a cantina and another, larger still, a storage barn for farm produce. The reason the settlement had been built in that particular place was a well that had been bored down in the very center of the square around which the building rose. Not a light showed as the bandits crept into the square, forming a group around the well.
