“... Now swell out, and with stiff necksPass on, ye sons of Eve! vale not your looks,Lest they descry the evil of your path.”–Dante.
“... Now swell out, and with stiff necksPass on, ye sons of Eve! vale not your looks,Lest they descry the evil of your path.”
–Dante.
The Grand Equerry was again the Dignitary of the hour. He held the Emperor’s stirrup, while the Emperor, fittingly attired, swung gracefully astride a curvetting charger. Behind was his coach, ready for him when he should tire of the saddle. It was already late in the afternoon, and he meant to travel all night. Flatterers begged him to consider the importance of his health, which but made him unyielding. Some slight martyrdom for his country appealed to Maximilian. No, he said, grave affairs might be afoot since the Confederacy’s surrender. The capital needed his presence, and he reminded them that the State came first, as always.
The retinue climbed into carriages. The escort, Dragoons, Austrians and Contra Guerrillas, formed in hollow square about their prince. Colonel Dupin scowled because he was going. Colonel Lopez, when unobserved, scowled because he was left behind. And Monsieur Éloin, at the Emperor’s side, thought well of himself in substituting for a rival favorite one so distant from favoritism as the Tiger. The Dragoons and Austrians who were to remain presented arms on the hacienda porch, and Lopez gave them the cue for a parting viva. The emancipated peons, still wet from spiritual grace, swelled the din gratefully and stridently, lured to it by their thoughtful pastor, the hacienda curate.
165But Maximilian still lingered. He looked from window to window under the colonnade, and seemed expectant. But Lopez signaled to the buglers, and the trumpet call and the redoubled huzzas of a people thrilled him out of his melancholy. With a sigh he gave over his private loves and poesy. He breathed deep and his eyes flashed. And as the grand monarch and good, he departed with the acclaim of posterity in his ears, conscious that the superb figure he made was for History’s contemplation.
At this time the Marquise d’Aumerle was half way up a ladder in the garden. She was picking the fragrant china blossoms, tossing them down to Berthe’s apron, and humming “Mironton, mironton, mirontaine” in blissful indifference to many things, to princes among them.
Nor was the other girl behind the hacienda shutters. Yet she, at least, saw him ride away. High up in the chapel tower, between the bell and the masonry, crouched a sobbing little figure. She gazed and gazed, with straining eyes. Over there below, in front of her father’s house, were glittering swords and dazzling helmets, and the sheen of gilded escutcheons on coach doors. And as the beautiful pageant wound its way along the highroad, she watched in fawn-like curiosity. The sobs were only involuntary. She was not thinking, then, that this was matter for grief. Her dark eyes, that had been weeping, and were now so dry, held to a certain one among the cavaliers, to the very tall and splendid one with the slender waist, and they kept him jealously fixed among the others, and were ever more impatient of the blurring distance. But when finally he was lost for an instant in the general bright haze of the company, and she could not be quite sure after that which was he, then indeed the eyelids fluttered in a kind of despair. Yet only after the last carriage had vanished under the giant banana leaves of the hill beyond, did the tears come and tremble upon her lashes.
166“He is married, the Emperor,” she told herself, as though the fact were that second written across the burning sky. At last, full, grim comprehension was hers.
The stones of the tower glowed like a brazier in the sun, but the girl, with her head on her arm against the parapet, shivered as with cold; and a numbness at her heart grew heavier and heavier, like weighted ice.
Below her the barren knoll, where an hour before swarthy stolid hundreds had crowded awaiting baptism, was lonely as the grave. The peons were dispersing to their village down by the river junction, or to their huts near the hacienda store, and on the air floated the falsetto nasal of their holiday songs, breaking ludicrously above the mumbling bass of loosely strung harps. Nearer by, the only life was an old man with a fife and a boy with a drum, who marched round and round the chapel, playing monotonously, while a second urchin every five minutes touched off a small cannon at the door. They did these things with solemn earnestness. It was to achieve an end, for San Felipe’s day would come soon, and meantime each and every lurking devil had to be driven off the sacred precincts. But there was one hideous fiend who grinned, and pinched, and shrieked. His abode was the girl’s heart, and he shrieked to her gleefully, that she could never, never in life, wed the man she loved. The fife and drum and the stupid little cannon simply made him the merrier.
The imps were left in peace for the night, and all about the chapel was dark and silent and desolate. But a man was working stealthily at one of the rear windows. It was a square, barred window, near the ground. The man chipped away at the granite sill with short, quick blows. The butt of his chisel was padded in flannel, so that even a chuckling that escaped him now and again made more sound than the steel. Soon he dropped his tools, and wrapping either hand around a167window bar, he braced both feet together against the wall, and pulled. The two bars scraped slowly toward him across the stone. Then, with a sharp, downward jerk he tore them out. Quickly he climbed inside and cut the ropes of a man who lay bound on the floor. Both men emerged noiselessly through the window.
“Have a care how you step,” whispered the rescuer. “Your faithful guards are busy sleeping and don’t want any disturbance.”
“That candle-stinking sacristy!” grumbled the rescued.
“But it’s the only stone calaboose on the ranch. In fact,Isuggested it, since Don Rodrigo should be kept tight and safe. That’s why Dupin left me behind.” The rescuer chuckled as before. “Careful, hombre, there’s a guard there, lying right in front of you!”
Rodrigo made out the prostrate form, and lifted a boot heel over the upturned face. But his liberator jerked him aside.
“Fool, you’ll wake the fat padre, and he doesn’t like my jests, says they’re inspired of the Evil One.”
“Thinking of the Bishop of Sonora’s waiting maid, was he?”
“Well, what of it? Didn’t he elope here with her?”
“And you, Don Tiburcio?”
“Of course; she naturally wanted to correct her first bad taste.”
“By running away with you? If you call that good taste––”
“I call that a good joke on the padrecito.”
Having by this time come safely to the front of the church, Rodrigo was for making certain his escape at once. But Tiburcio interposed. “There’s some talk still due between you and me,” he said. “Sit down, here in the doorway.”
“Well?” said the brigand uneasily.
“Well?” repeated his jocular friend.
“Well, there isn’t even a moon and we can’t deal monte,168as if that weren’t the same as giving you what you want, anyway.”
“I risk my hide saving you for money, then?” Don Tiburcio’s tone was aggrieved.
“Oh no, for friendship,” the sardonic Rodrigo corrected himself, “and I think as much of you in my turn, amigo mio. Not half an hour ago I was wrapped in anxiety, imagining you trying to collect blackmail, and I not near to keep my patriots from your throat. Oh, the sorrow of it!”
“God be praised that a dear friend came and eased your worries! But you are not an ingrate. Since the Confederate Gringo took all my money the other morning––”
“Tiburcio, on oath, I haven’t had money either, not since our last game at cards. There was Murguía, I know, but I let him off for bringing me that French girl. She was good for a big ransom, only your same Gringo–curse the intruder! If ever the Imperialists catch him, and Murguía is there to testify against him––”
Tiburcio moved nearer on the church step. “And then?”
“That’s our secret, Murguía’s and mine.”
“But Rodrigo, heiscaught. They are trying him and Murguía both this very minute. And do you know what for? For being your accomplices.”
The outlaw started exultantly. “Then, if you want him shot––”
“Well?–Oh don’t be afraid, maybe I can help.”
“Were you with Captain Maurel when we ambushed them near Tampico?”
“I can’t remember,” said Tiburcio tentatively.
“If you will hurry down to this court martial, perhaps you will remember better. Go, and I’ll leave you.”
“Not quite so fast, Rodrigo. You forget that your devoted rescuer is penniless.”
169“So am I, I tell you. We’ll both have to go to work, Don Tiburcio.”
“What’s the lay? Tell me.” The humorist’s tone was unmistakable.
Rodrigo looked about him in the dark. “Listen,” he whispered, “there’s a bullion convoy out of San Luis before long, but–you shall hear no more unless it is agreed that I am to meet them first.”
“Of course, hombre! How else could I threaten to expose them for contributing to the rebels?”
“Bien, it’s next week. You will meet them this side of Valles, some time Thursday or Friday.–Now I’m off. Adios.”
“Stay. You’ll find your horse down by the river. The administrator is waiting with it. And Rodrigo, don’t you want your pistol? Be more careful another time, and keep it loaded.”
Something in his tone nettled the brigand. “What do you mean? Give me my pistol.”
Tiburcio pointed it at him instead. “When you cool a little, yes. But it takes a good marksman to hit a Frenchman with an empty pistol–especially when one wakes up and finds himself tied.”
Rodrigo stiffened. This was menacing to his dignity.
“Both lassoed,” Tiburcio went on, “and no telling which was heifer and which vaquero, stampeding down on poor Max.–Ai de mi, I never thought it could be so funny!”
“Give me my pistol!”
“Slumbering like two babes in the wood, and your sweet innocent breaths perfuming the woody forest. I’d have covered you with leaves, like the little robins, only––”
“Was it you tied us, you––”
“Just like two babes, but,” and Tiburcio pointed his thumb to his mouth and shook his head sorrowfully, “that’s bad, very170bad. Why didn’t you leave me some? Of the cognac, especially?”
“If you don’t explain––”
“Softly there, amigo. Yes, I tied you.”
“Another of your jokes––”
“Inspired of the Evil One? Oh no, it was–precaution. Yes, that was it, come to think; just precaution. You see, I and Dupin had scattered your guerrillas, and I was scouting ahead, to stir up any ambush waiting for us–which I did later, when we chased them, and burned Culebra. But going along, I heard snoring, and found you two, like two––Now sit still!”
“Why didn’t you wake me? Then we could have roped the Frenchman.”
“And have him identify me after we’d gotten the ransom? Oh, no, I’m a loyal Imperialist. Now listen a minute, will you?–Our Contras were following me not a half mile behind. That meant I had to work quick. You see, I wanted to find you both there when I could come back alone. And meantime, I didn’t want you to hurt each other. If either got killed, there’d be no ransom. So I took your knife and his sabre. Then I tied you both with my lariat. I was going to get your lariat too, and tether the pair of you to a tree, hoping you’d hold each other there till I got back.Youwould do it, for I meant to pin a note on your sleeve, explaining. But just that minute the Frenchman stirred, for the Cossacks were getting into his ears, so I had to run back and turn them into another path.”
“So long as it wasn’t any of your infernal farces?”
“Well, itwasworth a ransom, the way it turned out.–Sit still, will you? YouknowI take you too seriously ever to think of any joke withyou! Here’s your artillery and cutlery. Quick now, clear out!”
Both rose to go, each to his respective deviltry, but not six171steps ahead in the black night Tiburcio stumbled over a soft, inert mass. He recovered himself, half cursing, half laughing.
“One of your guards, Rodrigo,” he muttered. “He must have got this far before the drug worked into his vitals.”
“Your mescal probably killed him,” said Rodrigo indifferently. “But a little knife slit will look more plausible in the morning, for you it will.”
Getting to his knees on the stone walk the outlaw groped over the body for a place to strike, holding his knife ready. But all at once he stopped and got up hastily, without a word. He only rubbed his left hand mechanically on his jacket.
“Well, what ails you?” asked Tiburcio.
Rodrigo gave a short, apologetic laugh. “It–it’s a woman!” He quit rubbing his hand, seeming to realize. “There’s blood,” he added.
“Here,” said Tiburcio, “you keep back, and run if anybody comes. I’m going to strike a match.”
By the flare they saw that it was a girl and that her head was crushed. Kneeling on either side, they peered questioningly, horrified, at each other. Their great sombreros almost touched. Their hard faces were yellow in the flickering light between, and the face looking up with its quiet eyes and dark purplish cleft in the brow was white, white like milk. With one accord the two men turned and gazed upward at the tower, whose black outline lost itself far above in the blacker shadows of the universe. They understood.
Tiburcio shrugged his shoulders, a silent comment on the tragedy from its beginning to this, its end. He threw the match away and arose, but Rodrigo still knelt, leaning over her, holding the poor battered head in his hands, half lifting it, and trying to look again into those eyes through the darkness. He would touch the matted hair, as if to caress, not knowing what he did, and each time he would jerk back his hand at the uncanny, sticky feeling. Roving thus, his fingers touched an172ivory cross, and closed over it. With no present consciousness of his act, he placed the symbol in his jacket, over his breast.
Tiburcio touched him on the shoulder. “I’ll go now, and bring her father,” he said.
“Yes,” returned the other vaguely, stumbling to his feet.
“It’s going to kill the old man,” murmured Tiburcio, “or–God, if it shouldnotkill him! He is a coward, but once he slapped you, Rodrigo, for so much as looking at her. And now, the Virgin help–may the Virgin help whoever’s concerned in this!–But here, you must go, do you hear?”
“Yes.”
“Then go, go!”
“Yes,” said Rodrigo again, moving slowly away.
“By the river, remember. You’ll find your horse there.”
“Captain Maurel’s, the fine black one?”
“Yes, I slipped it out of the stables for you.”
“The fine black one?”
“Yes, yes, hombre!”
“And–and she never–she never saw–how magnifico I look on–on that fine black horse.”
He was still muttering as he reeled and staggered down the hill.
When he was gone, and no alarm of sentinels rang out, Tiburcio took off his serape and laid it over the dark blot on the stones. Then he too stole away, to tell her father.
“Be this the whetstone of your sword; let griefConvert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.”–Macbeth.
“Be this the whetstone of your sword; let griefConvert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.”
–Macbeth.
“Where,” inquired Din Driscoll, with a benevolent interest in their doing the thing right, “is the judge advocate?”
Colonel Miguel Lopez resented what he took for a patronizing concern. It festered his complacency, for his was the code of the bowed neck to those above and the boot-tip for those below. Luckily for him, he did not strike the helpless prisoner. He turned to his judge’s bench instead, which was none other than the frayed and stately sofa of honor from the hacienda sala, deemed requisite to his dignity. The satin upholstery contrasted grotesquely with the adobe walls. Pungent tallow dips lighted the granary to a dull yellow, and mid the sluggish tobacco clouds were a shrinking prisoner in clerical black, and the mildly interested prisoner in gray, and red uniforms surrounding.
Lopez flung his sword across the empty box that was to serve as desk, and filled the crimson seat with pompous menace. Lopez was a Mexican, but did not look it. He had red hair and a florid skin, and he was large, with great feet and coarse hands. Yet the high cheek bones of an Indian were his. The contrast of coloring and features unpleasantly suggested a mongrel breed. The eyes had red lids, out of which the lashes struck like rusted needles, and the eyes themselves, of a faded blue, seemed to fawn an excuse for Nature’s maladjusting.174But he had a goodly frame on which to hang the livery of a king’s guardsman. And as the cross of the Legion of Honor ticketed his breast, he must have been a goodly man too, and his Maker’s insignia only a libel. Once Maximilian had said, “What, Bebello, and art thou a better judge of men than I, thy master and the master of men?” For it seemed that Bebello, the simple hound, had read Nature’s voucher instead of Napoleon’s, and being thus deceived, would ever snarl at the Colonel of Dragoons. Maximilian of course knew better. What looked like toadying was only profound deference for himself. The royal favorite could discriminate. He could also be the thick-headed, intolerable martinet. The sandy lashes bristled as the American inquired a second time if he were to have counsel.
“Being president of this court,” Lopez announced, “I am judge advocate.”
In the tone of congratulation Driscoll blandly said, “Well, then, I challenge the president.”
“Challenge?”
“Certainly, Your Honor. It’s my right, either on the ground of inexperience, malice, or–but I reckon the first two will do.”
“This is insolence!” cried the president, and glaring angrily, he maintained that it was a regular court martial for the field, and that as he was the ranking officer at hand, there could be no appeal beyond himself.
“A regular drum-head,” Driscoll observed. “Well, let it go at that. I’m in a hurry.”
Lopez called a lieutenant of Austrian cavalry to his right upon the sofa, and the Dragoon color sergeant to his left, and the three of them sat thenceforth in judgment. The charges were read, and next a deposition, gathered that day from Michel Ney. Therein appeared the American, reinforcing Rodrigo Galán at Tampico, and in so far aiding the abduction of Mademoiselle d’Aumerle.
175“The complicity is evident,” stated Lopez, and his colleagues, blinking at the candles on the box, nodded wisely.
“It’s straight so far,” Driscoll agreed, “but the story goes a little further. Does the ma’am’selle herself happen to have left any deposition?”
She had, admitted the president, but it merely corroborated the foregoing. Driscoll, in sole charge of his own defence, insisted that her deposition be read, but Lopez would permit no such waste of time. He was brooding on Monsieur Éloin usurping his own place near the Emperor, and he wanted to finish the present business so as to overtake them both.
Dupin’s written evidence provided the rest of the abduction story, seemingly, and there remained only the other charge, that of assisting at the ambush of the murdered Captain Maurel. For this there was no evidence, and the accused himself was examined.
“Your name?” asked the court.
“Driscoll.”
“Your full name, hombre?”
“John Dinwiddie Driscoll, Your Honor.”
“Din–whatever it is–that’s not a Christian name?”
“It was, when I got it. Maybe I’ve paganized it since.”
“Devil take you, this is solemn!”
“Yes, this is solemn.”
Lopez cracked his long nails irritably against each other.
“You came here via Tampico,” he began anew. “What days were you in Tampico?”
“From about the twenty-third or twenty-fourth, till we left a few days ago.”
All three judges bent over a memorandum which the president pointed out among his notes. Captain Maurel was killed about April 26th.
“How did you occupy yourself while in Tampico?”
176“Mostly trying to persuade Murgie here that it was his move.”
“But your horse needed exercise. Did you at any time ride across the river?”
“I didn’t notice. Have you anyone who saw me cross?”
“Goot!” blurted out the Austrian who was one of the judges, so suddenly that everybody half jumped. “Ya, das iss die cosa, sabe! Who has him seen cross?”
The court floundered. The witness demanded by the accused was lacking. Murguía, a restless, huddled form on a straw-bottomed chair, was watching hungrily every step in the examination. Now he shifted excitedly, and his sharp jaws worked with a grinding motion. Then his voice came, a raucous outburst.
“Search him, Your Mercy!”
Lopez browbeat the meddler, and–took his advice. Driscoll submitted tolerantly to their fumbling over him, and all the while Murguía looked on as a famished dog, especially when they pulled out the whiskey flask. But when they tossed the thing aside, he sank deep into his black coat and gave vent to mumblings.
“Of course we find nothing,” Lopez complained, “since his accomplice recommended the search.”
It seemed, too, that the state’s case must fall.
“The Captain Maurel charge cannot hold,” announced the court.
“Ya, goot–mucha bueno!” exclaimed the Austrian with enthusiasm, while the color sergeant, who had a red nose, wet his lips hopefully. He believed that an acquitted outlaw, if a gentleman, would stand a bottle.
“And as to the first charge,” continued the president, “here is the deposition of the Señorita d’Aumerle, which I have held till now for this purpose. Read it, and you will note that though the marquesa bears out the Señor Ney, she further177testifies to the prisoner having later saved her from this very Rodrigo Galán at peril to himself. Bien, señores, have you any further questions?”
The Austrian crinkled his brow, and after a momentous pause, shook his head till his cheeks rattled. The Dragoon promptly replied, “No, mi coronel.” Then the three withdrew, and when they came back, the Dragoon wiping his lips, they informed the accused that he was not guilty.
“Which isn’t news,” said Driscoll as he thanked them.
Murguía’s turn came next. The proof of the old man’s guilt blossomed almost of itself. Jacqueline, to clear her protector, had been forced to depose how Murguía had willingly betrayed her into Rodrigo’s hands. But she described the old man’s reluctance. He would have saved her, except for his terror of the outlaw. The sole case for the defence was Murguía’s character for stinginess; such a miser could not be accused of aiding the guerrillas. But this very point seemed to heighten Lopez’s prejudice against him. Driscoll, being held to testify, only talked sociably, and told nothing, and when under the quizzing he finally lost patience, he said, “Oh, let him go! What’s the use?”
But they were so far from any such thing that they condemned him to be shot.
Then a voice was heard at the door. The sentinel there stumbled back, and Don Tiburcio brushed by him into the room.
“Old man,” he called, “come with me! Your daughter––”
Murguía started up, weakly swaying. The senile eyeballs, so lately parched by fear, swam in a moisture not of avarice. Someone was speaking to him of his daughter. He had not seen her yet. They would not let him. And now he must think of her in this new connection, which was his death. And her misery to learn it, and her misery, afterward! On the morrow they would be taking him to the capital, his178sentence would be confirmed, he would be shot. Nothing of this he doubted. And he would never see her again.
Murguía stretched out his arms toward the president of the court, “You will let me go to her, señor? Your Mercy will let me go to her?” He murmured her name over and over, “María de la Luz! María–Luzita mia!” until the words became a kind of crooning. Then he would break forth again, entreating, commanding, “Your Mercy will let me see her? Señor, youwilllet me see her!”
At the first note of intrusion Lopez had brought the pommel of his sword down upon the box in front of him. But the syllables of the girl’s name seemed to get into his memory, and he began to stare with a puzzled frown at the half-crazed old man. Lifting his eyes, he met Tiburcio’s, and Tiburcio himself nodded in some deep hidden significance. Lopez straightened abruptly, as at an astounding revelation.
“Tell me, Señor Murguía,” he said, “your daughter–Yes, yes, man, you shall see her!–But listen, what is she like? Has she large black eyes? Does she wear red sometimes? Come, señor, answer!”
The father gazed, wonderingly, jealously. How should an elegant officer from the City and the Court know aught of María de la Luz?
Tiburcio crept behind the sofa, and bending to Lopez’s ear, he whispered, “Si, si, mi coronel, she is the one you have in mind, and she is his daughter.”
Lopez swung round and searched the blackmailer’s face. “And now––”
“You will let him come,” said Tiburcio. “But bring two guards. And have four others with–well, with a stretcher.”
Again Lopez searched the dark crescent that was Tiburcio’s eye, and again Tiburcio nodded with deep significance. “Bring him,” he repeated, “but tell him nothing. Seeing will be enough.”
179Murguía went, unknowing. He would see her, thanks to some freakish kindness in Don Tiburcio. He was torn between the joy of the meeting and the sharp grief of the parting that must follow. At the time he never noticed that they led him up the chapel walk instead of toward the hacienda house. Tiburcio was ahead with a lantern, but when near the top of the hill he turned back to them, yet not before the expectant Lopez had seen a black something on the pavement under the swinging light.
“You first, mi coronel,” said Tiburcio.
“I, you mean!” cried Murguía, “I, señor!”
“But we wish to see first if she is here,” said Lopez. “Don Tiburcio thought she might be at vespers.”
“Vespers? There are no vespers to-night. Yet we come here! Why? Why do we come here?”
Tiburcio motioned to the guards. “Hold him until we return,” he ordered.
A Dragoon reached out a hand indifferently to Murguía’s collar, and that second the old man’s ten fingers were at his throat. They overpowered him at last, but they would have fared better with a wildcat.
Tiburcio and Lopez went alone. They stopped before the covered thing near the church door.
“So,” mused the colonel, “she ended itthisway.”
“From the tower,” Tiburcio grimly added.
“His––”
“Well, say it. You mean His Majesty?”
“His Majesty need know nothing of the–of the finale.”
“Who is there to tell him, por Dios? I won’t. You won’t.”
“But you forget a third, Don Tiburcio. I mean the man who was with you several evenings ago, when you––”
“When I was carrying off the padre’s sweetheart?”
“When somehow you two happened in this desolate neighborhood. Since you took his name out of my mouth just180now, you must have recognized that it was His Majesty whom you saw talking to her almost where she now lies. I was near by, guarding his privacy, but you both escaped before I could stop you. Now then, who was that other intruder?”
The other was Rodrigo Galán, but Tiburcio replied, “The other will not have much to say. Poor Captain Maurel!”
“Bueno, bueno!”
“Not yet, mi coronel. Only we two know of Maximilian’s part in this, but we must keep it from her father above all others. I am a loyal Imperialist, Don Miguel.”
“What difference does that make?”
“The Empire faces a crisis.”
The royal favorite started guiltily. Since the news of the Confederacy’s surrender, Lopez’s ambitions were clouded by a growing fear of the fugitive Mexican republic. The Republic would have a good memory for royal favorites, and he had been thinking on it. “Will Lee’s surrender make such–such a difference?” he faltered.
“So much,” retorted Tiburcio, “that to-morrow we will have more rebels yet. So much, that what with freeing peons and confiscating nationalized church lands and giving them back to the church–well, a very little more might decide between Empire and Republic.”
“A little more? What do you mean?”
“I mean money for the rebels. Luz’s father is rich. If he knew that Maximilian––”
“Hombre, hombre, he’s a miser!”
“Just the same, I’m a loyal Imperialist, and if you are, too, you will take good care to tell nothing to Don Anastasio.”
“You forget, señor, that I am the one to say that to you.”
“Then don’t forget, Colonel Lopez. Do not forget that she fell, that it was a simple accident.”
“Yes, a simple accident. Wait here, I am going to bring her father.”
181On returning Lopez sent the guards away, and he and Murguía were alone together. The old man stood dazed, unresisting.
“One minute more,” said Lopez. “First, I must tell you something. And afterward, you will remember. Yes, you will remember–afterward. You know who I am, that I command the Dragoons of the Empress.–Are you listening? But do you know that, in a way, I am Maximilian’s confidant? Whenever he walks or rides, incognito, dressed as a ranchero, I alone go with him, as I did during the past ten days while we stopped at Las Palmas, three leagues from here. The very first evening there, we two rode out, with our cloaks about us. He likes to commune with nature, and gather curious flowers which he pastes in a book and labels with Latin names. But this time he was interested in peons, yet as he had a delicacy about prying into his host’s business, we rode until we left Las Palmas behind us. His Majesty would gaze on the hills and look at the sunset, and he talked to me of a poetic calm about them which made him long for he knew not what. And Murguía––”
Here the speaker paused abruptly, and his faded eyes shifted and hardened.
“And Murguía, we came here, and–he met your child. He met her here, at this chapel, where she had been to pray for her aunt. Old man, do you hear me, the Emperor met your daughter! Then, next day, instead of going on with his journey, he complained of a cough, and stayed at Las Palmas. But every evening he rode here, he and I. Once I found a chance to ask her her name, but she would only tell her given name.–There, you will remember? Yes, you will–after you have seen her. Come, she is not far away.”
“... and I think I shall begin to take pleasure in being at home and minding my business. I pray God I may, for I finde a great need thereof.” –Pepys’s Diary.
“... and I think I shall begin to take pleasure in being at home and minding my business. I pray God I may, for I finde a great need thereof.” –
Pepys’s Diary.
An hour later the candles were still guttering in the court room, and here Colonel Lopez assembled his minions of justice a second time. In his manner now there was nothing of the uncertainty, nor the feigning of penetration, which had before marked his handling of the trials. He pounded the box with his sword.
“In the light of new evidence,” he announced shortly, “the two cases of a while ago are reopened.”
Din Driscoll strolled in. “I’ve come for my belt and pistols. Dupin took them,” he said.
Lopez signed to the Dragoons to close round him. Then he gave vent. Did the Señor Gringo laugh so much at Mexican justice, since instead of escaping while he had the chance, he came back, coolly demanding his property? It was insolence!
“Gra-cious,” exclaimed Driscoll in his counterfeit of a startled old lady, “what’s the matter?”
But Lopez put on a mien of dark cunning, and replied that he would find out later.
Murguía’s case came first. The stricken father was there, dragged from his dead by the petty concerns of this world which cannot bide for grief. He was as a sleep-walker. He had come into another universe. The hacienda sala, where his child lay mid tapers, where mumbled prayers arose, or this183adobe, where uniformed men fouled the air with cigarettes and looked after the Empire’s business–the one or the other, both places were of that other universe, dark and silent, in which his dazed being groped alone.
The new element in the court martial was Tiburcio, and Tiburcio had in mind one golden goose to save and one meddling Gringo to lose. He riddled the foregoing evidence with refreshing originality. He testified to the brigand attack for possession of the marquise. Had he not found Don Anastasio stretched upon the ground? Had not the dauntless anciano, the self-same Don Anastasio, fallen in defence of the two French señoritas? And yet, did he not keep Rodrigo at bay? Si, señores, he had indeed, until Colonel Dupin and the Contras arrived. He, the witness, was with them. He had seen these things. Now, let anyone say that the loyal Señor Murguía was an accomplice of that cut-throat without shame, Rodrigo Galán; whom he, the witness, loathed from the innermost recesses of his being; whom he, the witness, should be greatly pleased to strike dead. But let anyone again besmirch the character of Don Anastasio!
“No, no,” vociferously growled the Austrian.
Lopez opposed nothing. He had a clear notion this time as to what he wanted. Driscoll marveled, and enjoyed it. Pigheadedness had made Don Anastasio guilty, why shouldn’t perjury make him innocent? And it did. The mountain of suspicion and some few pebbles of evidence melted away as lard in a skillet. The verdict was acquittal.
Driscoll knew well enough that the presence of the loyal Imperialist with the baleful eye meant a reversal in his own case too. But the recent and very definite animus of Lopez against him he could in no way fathom. The blackmailer testified again. The prisoner, this Americano, had waylaid him in the wood two days before, and had robbed him of his last cent.
184“Which you stole from Murgie,” suggested the prisoner.
“I? I steal from Murguía?” cried Tiburcio indignantly. “Ask him! Ask him!”
Murguía was asked. Had the witness ever, on any occasion, robbed him? They repeated the question several times, and at last the rusty black wig, which was bowed over a chair, slowly shook in the negative. Perhaps he had settled a debt with the witness? The wig changed to an affirmative.
Tiburcio gleamed triumphantly. “An audacious defence!” he exclaimed. “But luckily for me, Don Anastasio is here.”
“Oh, hurry up!” protested Driscoll.
Asked if he knew anything more of the prisoner, witness could not swear for certain, except that he recognized in the American one of the guerrillas who had ambushed and slain Captain Maurel near Tampico. Yes, witness was scouting for the murdered captain at the time. Naturally, witness was present.
“You wanted proof, Señor Americano, that you crossed the river?” said Lopez. “Well, are you content now?”
“Go on,” Driscoll returned. He was bored. “Some people on earth are alive yet, but while Tibby is on the stand maybe I killed them too. I wouldn’t swear I didn’t.”
Murguía was called next, but he did not seem to hear. His body was bent over his knees, silently trembling. A Dragoon pressed a hand on his shoulder, but a sobbing groan racked his frame, as of a very sick man who will not be awakened to his pain. The pause that followed was uncanny–a syncope in the affairs of men like a gaping grave under midnight clouds. Lopez spoke again. He regretted that they must intrude on a fresh and poignant sorrow, but the case in hand was a matter of state, before which the individual had to give way. It was very logical and convincing. But the feeble old shoulders made no sign.
Tiburcio leaned over and shook him gently, and whispered185in his ear. Still Murguía did not move. Tiburcio gripped his arm. “You and Rodrigo,” he said, so low that none could hear, “there was something arranged between you. What was it? Tell me! Tell me, I say, if you want the Gringo shot!”
He bent nearer, and against his ear came a muffled sound of lips. When he straightened, it was to address the court.
If he might ask a question, had they searched the prisoner? They had. But thoroughly? Thoroughly. But not enough to find anything? No. Then he would suggest that they had not searched thoroughly. The court seemed impressed, and Driscoll was fumbled over again. Still they found nothing.
“Whose flask is that?” Tiburcio demanded, pointing to where it had been tossed and forgotten. The prisoner’s. “Look that over again,” Tiburcio insisted. A guard handed it to Lopez, who squinted inside. “There is nothing,” he said. It was only an old canteen whose leather covering was dropping apart from rot.
Murguía’s head raised, and his eyes fixed themselves on the judge, and in their intense fixity glittered a quick, keen lust. It was hideous, loathsome, fascinating. The eyes were swimming in tears, but their hungered, metal-like sheen made the sorrow monstrous, and was the more foul and ghastly because it distorted so pure a thing as sorrow. Driscoll felt queerly that he must, must remove from the world this decrepit old man who bemoaned a dead child. The itch for murder terrified him, and he turned away angrily from the horrid face that aroused it. But Murguía’s stare never relaxed while Lopez toyed with the canteen. And when Lopez, as though accidentally, thrust a finger under the torn leather and brought out a folded paper, the bright points of Murguía’s eyes leaped to flame. But the head went down again, as once more his grief swept over him, and another sob caught at the heartstrings of every man there.
Lopez spread out the paper, and as he read, he started186violently. He passed it on to the Austrian and the color sergeant, and they also started. But the most amazed was Driscoll, when he too had a chance to read.
“Ha, you recognize it?” exclaimed the president.
“Sure I do. It’s an order from Colonel Dupin to Captain Maurel. Rodrigo had it in Tampico, making people think thathewas Captain Maurel.”
But the court was not so simple. “How came you by it?” demanded Lopez. “Have occasion to be Maurel yourself sometime, eh?”
With wrath, with admiration, Driscoll faced round on Don Anastasio. “Oh you pesky, shriveled-up gorilla!” he breathed. He was no longer amazed. This accounted for Murguía’s borrowing his flask the night they were in the forest. It accounted for Murguía and Rodrigo plotting together in Tampico. But why tell such things to the court? The Missourian was not a fool like King Canute, who ordered back the waves. “Hurry up,” he said wearily to the waves instead. Since he could not hold the tide, anticipation chilled more than the drowning bath itself.
The tide assuredly did not wait. It rolled right on, nearer and nearer. Murguía was lifted to his feet. He was remembering already what Lopez had told him, about his daughter and Maximilian, as Lopez had said he would. The American’s easy, stalwart form in gray filled his blurred eyes. Here was a Confederate emissary come with an offer of aid for that same Maximilian. Such had been Murguía’s suspicion from the first, and now it moved him with venomous hate. Yes, he would testify. Yes, yes, the prisoner had ridden out alone at Tampico. Yes, yes, yes, the prisoner was with Rodrigo there.
“But why, Don Anastasio,” asked Tiburcio purely in fantastic mischief, “did you bring such a disturbing man to our happy country?”
187“That will do,” Lopez interposed. “The Señor Murguía could not know at the time that this fellow was Rodrigo’s agent.”
“And,” Murguía added eagerly, “I was helpless, there at Mobile. The Confederates could have sunk my boat, and he held an order from Jefferson Davis.”
“What’s that?” cried Tiburcio, his humor suddenly vanished. “What’s that, an order from Jefferson Davis?”
Tiburcio’s was a new interest, now. He possessed a mind as crooked as his vision, and being crooked, it followed unerringly the devious paths of other minds. So, they had made a tool of him! Rodrigo and Murguía wanted the Gringo shot to help the rebel cause. And he, Tiburcio of the cunning wits, had just sworn away, not only the Gringo’s life, but the possible salvation of the Empire. Coming from Jefferson Davis, the Gringo with his mission could mean nothing else. Then there was Lopez. Tiburcio did not love this changeling Mexican who had red hair. But what could be the mongrel’s game? Why had he freed Murguía, if not to unleash a small terrier at Maximilian’s heel? Why was he trying the American over again, if not to poison a friendly mastiff? And why either, if Don Miguel Lopez were not seeking to make friends with the Republic? Or perhaps he was at heart a Republican. Thus Don Tiburcio, a loyal Imperialist, read the finger posts as he ambled down the crooked path.
Yes, and here was Lopez putting on the final touch. Here he was, the traitor, pronouncing the death sentence, and poor impotent Don Tiburcio gnawing his baffled rage, as one would say of a villain. The execution was to take place the very next morning. His Majesty the Emperor would be asked to approve, afterward.