“It may be short, it may be long,’Tis reckoning-day!’ sneers unpaid Wrong.”–Lowell.
“It may be short, it may be long,’Tis reckoning-day!’ sneers unpaid Wrong.”
–Lowell.
It was a long column that undulated over the cacti plain with the turnings of the national highway. Men and horses bent like whitened spectres under a cloud of saltpetre dust. They burned with thirst, and had burned during fifteen days of forced marching over bad roads. They kept their ranks after the manner of soldiers, else they would have seemed a hurrying mob, for there was scant boast of uniforms. The officers wore shoulder straps of green or yellow, and some of the men had old military caps, high and black, with manta flaps protecting the neck.
Except for an occasional pair of guaraches, or sandals, the infantry trudged barefoot, little leather-heeled Mercuries who cared nothing for thorns. Their olive faces, running with sweat, were for the most part typically humble, patient under fatigue, lethargic before peril. Here and there one held the hand of his soldadera, like him a stoic brown creature, who shared his hardships that she might be near to grind his ration of corn into tortillas. Veterans were there who had fought the French at Puebla, and on coarse frayed shirts displayed their heroes’ medals. Some among them had meantime served the Empire, and had lately deserted back again–but no matter. In the cavalry there were those who on a time had ridden against the Americans in Santa Anna’s famous guard. Now370they rode with Driscoll, among the Missourians. And the Missourians sang:
“My name it is Joe Bowers,And I’ve got a brother Ike;I come from old Missouri,Yes, all the way from Pike.”
“My name it is Joe Bowers,And I’ve got a brother Ike;I come from old Missouri,Yes, all the way from Pike.”
Their mouths opened wide to the salty dust, and they roared with great-lunged humor, the stentor note of Tall Mose Bledsoe–Colonel Bledsoe of the State of Pike–far and away in the van of the chorus. Even the Mexicans, who comprised over half the regiment, chanted forth the tune. They had heard it often enough, and thought it a species of appropriate national hymn. Only the colonel of the troop rode in silence, but not gloomily. This playfulness of his pet before a snarl was music that he liked. The other Missouri colonels (brevet) were as boys ever, were still only Joe Shelby’s “young men for war.” There was Colonel Marmaduke of Platte. There was Colonel Crittenden of Nodaway. There was Colonel Grinders from the Ozarks. There was Colonel Clay of Carroll, and Colonel Carroll of Clay. These were captains. Colonel Bledsoe was a major, and so was Colonel Boone, also chief of scouts. Colonel Clayburn, otherwise the “Doc” of Benton, was ranking surgeon; while the chaplain, lovingly known as “Old Brothers and Sisters,” and the choicest fighter among them, was lieutenant-colonel.
Of course some of the four or five hundred colonels had to be privates. But they did not mind, they were colonels just the same. Which provoked complications, especially with a Kansan who had wandered among them some time since. The Kansan, whose name was Collins, was an ex-Federal, even one of their ancient and warmest enemies, of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry. And being a mettlesome young man into the bargain, he rose by unanimous consent to command a native company of the troop. But Captain Collins found it hard to address a371Missouri private as colonel, and to be addressed by the Missouri private as an inferior in rank. A sporadic outburst of jayhawker warfare generally ensued. But according to the merger treaty between the Republic of Colonels and the República Mexicana, the Missourian was strictly in his rights. Besides, both needed the exercise, and after the business of fists, formality dropped of itself. Captain Collins thereupon became “Harry;” and the private “Ben” or “Jim,” or whatever else.
Driscoll’s troop wanted for nothing. Regimentals, luckily, were not considered a want. But in replacing worn-out slouch hats and cape-coats, the Americans set an approximate standard, which was observed also by their fellow troopers among the Mexicans. They were able to procure sombreros, wide-brimmed and high-peaked, of mouse-colored beaver with a rope of silver. The officers and many of the men had long Spanish capas, or cloaks, which were black and faced in gray velvet. Their coats were short charro jackets. As armor against cacti, they either had “chaps” or trousers “foxed” over in leather, with sometimes a Wild Western fringe. They came to be known as the Gray Troop, or the Gringo Grays. The natives themselves were proudest of the latter title.
The brigade marched as victors, but they remembered how they had formerly skulked as hunted guerrillas, and also, how Mendez had scourged the dissident villages. They found bodies hanging to trees. At Morelia a citizen who cried “Viva la Libertad!” had been brained with a sabre. It was the hour for reprisals. And Régules exacted suffering of themocho, or clerical, towns that had sheltered the “traitors.” Requisitions for arms, horses, and provisions marked his path. Deserters swelled his ranks. He had enough left-overs from the evacuation to organize what in irony he called his Foreign Legion. At Acámbaro a second Republican army, under General Corona–“welcomer than a stack of blues,” as Boone said–more372than doubled their force, and together they hastened on to Querétero.
But at Celaya, when men were thinking of rest in the cool monasteries there, they learned that they must not pause. The word came from El Chaparrito, who ever watched the Empire as a hawk poised in mid-air. General Escobedo of the Army of the North had pursued Miramon south into Querétero, but only to find him reinforced there by Mendez and the troops from the capital. This superior array meant to attack Escobedo, then turn and destroy Corona and Régules. The Republicans, therefore, must be united at once.
The message was no sooner heard than the two weary brigades of Corona and Régules set forth again. They covered the remaining thirty miles that night, expecting a victorious Imperialist army at each bend in the road. But they met instead, toward morning, a lone Imperialist horseman galloping toward them. Régules’s sharp eyes caught the glint of the stranger’s white gold-bordered sombrero, and with a large Castilian oath he plucked out his revolver. Driscoll touched his arm soothingly.
“But, María purísima,” cried Régules, “he’s an Explorador!”
The Exploradores were Mendez’s scouts, his bloodhounds for a Republican trail, and the most hated of all that breed.
“Aye, Señor General,” the stranger now spoke, “I was even the capitan of Exploradores, who kisses Your Mercy’s hand.”
There was a familiar quality in the man’s half chuckle, and Driscoll hastily struck a match. In its light a face grew before him, and a pair of malevolent eyes, one of them crossed and beaming recognition, met his.
“Well, Tibby?” said Driscoll quietly.
“First your pistols, then what you know,” commanded Régules. “Here, in between us. Talk as we ride, or––”
Don Tiburcio complied. Such had been his intention.
373“I am no more a loyal Imperialist,” he announced, with a gruesome contortion of the mouth.
“Nor a live deserter for long,” said Régules. “Quick, what’s the news at Querétero?”
“Carrai, my news and more will jolt out if I open my mouth. Eh, mi coronel,” he added to Driscoll, “you’ve taught this barbarous gait to the Republic too, I see?”
“Better obey orders,” Driscoll warned him gently.
“But there’s no need of hurry, señores. Not now, there isn’t.”
“You mean the Imperialists have whipped Escobedo, that––”
“Not so fast, mi general. If they had, wouldn’t I want you to hurry, for then there’d be a conquering Empire waiting for you?”
“Colonel Driscoll,” said Régules, “fall back a step. I’m going to kill this fellow now.”
“As you wish, general. But he’s got something to tell.”
“Then por Dios, why doesn’t he?”
“Yes, Tibby, why don’t you?”
Don Tiburcio cocked a puzzled head toward the American. He had not known such softness of voice in Mendez’s former captain of Lancers. But he saw that Driscoll had drawn his pistol, which accorded so grimly with the mildness of his tone that the scout chuckled in delight and admiration.
“You know that I’ll tell–now,” he said reproachfully. “In a word, there’s been no battle at all, curse him, curse both––”
“No battle! Escobedo kept away then?”
“No, not even that. The Imperialists would not fight, and the Empire has lost its last chance. Curse them both, curse––”
“Well, curse away, but who, what?”
“I curse, señores mios,” and the scout’s words grated in374rage and chagrin, “I curse His Excellency the general-of-division-in-chief of the army of operations, Don Leonardo Marquez. I curse, señores, the Reverend Señor Abbot, Padre Augustin Fischer––”
“Good, that’s finished. Now tell us why there was no battle.”
“I curse His Ex––”
“You have already, but now––”
Tiburcio flung up his hand in a gesture of assent, and his ugly features relaxed. Though going at a brisk trot, he rolled a cigarette and lighted it. Then he told his story. Querétero? Ha, Querétero was now the Court, the Army, the Empire! Pious townsmen shouted “Viva el Señor Emperador!” all day long. The cafés were alive with uniforms and oaths and high play. Padres and friars shrived with ardor. There was the theatre. Fashion promenaded under the beautiful Alameda trees, and whispered the latest rumors of the Empress Carlota. Maximilian decorated the brave, and bestowed gold fringed standards. Then came Escobedo and his Legion del Norte, but they kept behind the hills. Bueno, the Empire would go forth and smite them, and the pious townspeople climbed to the housetops to see it done. And yesterday morning the Empire, with banners flying and clarion blasts, did march out and form in glittering battle array.
“And then, hombre?”
“And then the Empire marched back again, señores.”
Régules and Driscoll were stupefied. What gross idiocy–or treachery–had thrown away the Empire’s one magnificent chance?
Tiburcio sucked in his breath. “I curse––”
“Marquez?” cried Régules.
“Si señor, Marquez! Marquez cried out against the attack, and His Majesty ordered the troops back into town again.”
375“But Miramon, hombre? Miramon, the best among you, where was he?”
“General Miramon fairly begged to fight, but he has been defeated once, and now Marquez warns the Emperor against Miramon’s ‘imprudence.’ Marquez is chief of staff, and crows over Miramon, who was once his president. He personally ordered Miramon off the field, yet it was Miramon who first made the insolent little whelp into a general.”
“This,” said Driscoll, “does not explain why you desert to us?”
For an instant the old malignant humor gleamed in the baleful crescent. “It’s the fault of the fat padrecito,” he replied. “Your Mercy perhaps does not know about the pretty servant he eloped with from the Bishop of Durango’s to Murguía’s hacienda? Well, but trouble started when I saw her, or rather, when she saw me, even me, señor, for then she perceived that the padrecito was not a handsome man. Presto, there was another eloping, and the holy Father Fischer felt bad, so very bad that when he got into favor with Maximilian, he had me condemned for certain toll-taking matters he knew of. But I vanished in time, and I’ve been serving under Mendez as a loyal and undiscouraged Imperialist until yesterday. But yesterday the padre recognized me at a review of the troops. Your Mercy figures to himself how long I waited after that? Your Mercy observed how fast I was riding?”
The fellow’s audacity saved him. The news he brought proved correct. Escobedo had not been attacked. Besides, Régules perhaps hoped to trap Mendez through the former Imperialist scout, though Driscoll derided the idea and even counseled the worthy deserter’s execution.
Don Tiburcio’s lank jaw dropped. Driscoll’s advice was too heavy a recoil on his own wits, for had he not once saved the Gringo’s life, feeling that one day he might be a beneficiary376of the Gringo’s singular aversion to shooting people? And now here was the Gringo in quite another of his unexpected humors. But what bothered Don Tiburcio most was the acumen that tempered the American’s mercy. The facts indeed stood as Driscoll casually laid them before General Régules. Tibby, for instance, had neglected to call himself a “loyal” Republican. Asked for a description of the new earthworks on the Cerro de las Campanas, he only told how peons and criminals were forced to carry adobes there though exposed to Escobedo’s sharpshooters, which had in it for Tibby the subtle element of a jest. Or asked about the new powder mills, he described how Maximilian slept patriotically wrapped in a native serape, woven with the eagle and colors, or related how the Emperor won the hearts of soldiers and citizens by his princely and ever amiable bearing.
“Now sing us the national hymn,” said Driscoll, “and the betrayal of your former friends will be complete.”
But though Don Tiburcio had deserted for convenience and perhaps meant to be a spy in the dissident camp, yet Régules saved him, while Driscoll lifted his shoulders indifferently and at heart was not sorry.
The Celaya road, crossing a flat country, first touches Querétero on its southwestern corner, and from here the two Republican brigades beheld the ancient romantic town in the dawn as they approached. Many beautiful Castilian towers, stately and tapering to needles of stone, rose from among flat roofs and verdure tufts, and pointed upward to a sky as soft and warm as over the Tuscan hills. Other spires were Gothic, and others truncated, but the temples that gave character to the whole were those of Byzantine domes. Lighted by the sun’s level rays of early morning, their mosaic colors glittered as in some bright glare of Algeria, but were relieved by the town’s cooling fringe of green and the palms of many plazas within. It might have been a Moorish city, in Happy Arabia377called paradise, a city of fountains, and wooded glens, like haunts of mythical fauns. Querétero once boasted a coat of arms, granted by a condescending Spanish monarch, and for loyalty to the hoary order of king and church she in those old days described herself as Very Noble and Royal. Stern cuirassed conquistadores held her as a key to the nation’s heart, as a buckler for the capital, and lately the French did also. And now the Hapsburg had come to a welcome of garlands, and called her his “querida.”
But however excellently Querétero served as a base of military operations, as a besieged place pocketed among hills her aspect altered woefully. She was like an egg clutched in the talons of an eagle. On north and east and south the hills swept perilously near, a low, convenient range, with only a grass plain a few miles wide separating them from the town below. On north and east the heights were already sprinkled with Escobedo’s tents and cannon. They commanded the only two strongholds of the besieged, as well as the town itself, which lay between. One stronghold was the Cerro de las Campanas, a wedge-shaped hill on the northwestern edge of the town, which held nothing but trenches. On the northwestern edge was the other stronghold, the mound of Sangremal, which fell away as a steep bluff to the grassy plain below. From the bluff, across the plain, to the hills opposite, stretched a magnificent aqueduct. On the mound’s commodious summit of tableland there was the Plaza de la Cruz, also the Church de la Cruz, and an old Franciscan hive, called the monastery de la Cruz. Here Maximilian established himself in a friar’s lonely cell. On the north a small river skirted the town, on the south, where nothing intervened between the grassy plain and the wooded Alameda, the besiegers found the most vulnerable flank.
On this side investment began with the arrival of Corona and Régules, and soon after, of General Riva Palacio. The378Republicans numbered fifteen thousand already, and more were coming daily, but as yet there were ragged strands in the noose being woven around the beleaguered place. Curiously enough, the most feverish to see the cordon perfected was none other than Don Tiburcio.
“Marquez will escape! Marquez will fly the net!” he kept bewailing. “Si señor, and the padrecito with him, curse them both!”
Two weeks passed, filled with skirmishes and ominous tests of strength. At night fiery parabolas blazed their course against the sky, up from the outer hills, sweeping down on Las Campanas or La Cruz. Imperialist chiefs urged a general attack, but again Marquez foiled their hopes. Then, at two o’clock one morning, there came to pass what Tiburcio had feared. A body of horse stole out upon the plain, and gained the unguarded Sierra road to Mexico. Four thousand cavalry pursued over the hills, but in vain. The fugitives were Marquez and the Fifth Lancers, his escort. He was gone to the capital to raise funds, and to bring back with him, at once, the Imperialist garrison there of five thousand men. Doting Maximilian had even named him lieutenant of the Empire, and Mexico City would shortly have the Leopard for regent. Querétero, moreover, was seriously weakened by the loss of the Fifth Lancers, and there were those who remembered how, when Guadalajara was besieged by Liberals seven years before, Marquez had likewise set out for aid, and had returned–too late.
To his wrathful disgust, Don Tiburcio learned that Father Fischer was also gone with Marquez. The priest had disguised himself in an officer’s cloak, and for the moment none in the town knew of his flight. The fat padre, it appeared, no longer hoped for the luscious bishopric of Durango. His was the rat’s instinct, as regards a sinking ship.
The Leopard and the Rat got away only in time. The379very next day ten thousand ragged Inditos, largely conscripts, arrived from the Valley of Mexico and filled the gap in the besiegers’ line. Investment was now complete, against a paltry nine thousand within the town.
“The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.”–Bacon.
“The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.”
–Bacon.
But the paltry nine thousand were the best army of Mexicans ever yet gathered together. For weeks they kept more than thirty thousand Republicans out of an unwalled, almost an unfortified town. But while the Republicans were largelychinacos, or raw soldiery, they inside were trained men. There were the Cazadores, a Mexican edition of the Chasseurs, organized by Bazaine under French drill masters. There was Mendez’s seasoned brigade. There was Arellano’s artillery, though numbering only fifty pieces. There were the crack Dragoons of the Empress, the Austro-Mexican Hussars, and a squadron of the Municipal Guards. There were veterans who had fought at Cerro Gordo, and steadily ever since in the civil wars. There was the ancient Battalion de Celaya, mainstay of the Spanish viceroys, and later of the Emperor Iturbide, its colonel. There were the Battalion del Emperador, the Tiradores de la Frontera, a company of engineers, and several well-disciplined regiments of the line.
But the day came when they began to starve, and being hungry took the heart out of many things. It took the heart out of bombarding Escobedo in his hillside adobe; out of taunting “uncouth rebels.” The rebels were in trenches often not a street’s width distant, and for reply they pointed to certain dangling acorns who had been “traitors” caught slipping through the lines. Being hungry took the heart out381of the quick-time diana, played after a brilliant sortie. Out of the embrace Maximilian gave Miramon. Out of Miramon’s call for vivas for His Majesty the Emperor. Out of standard decorating and promotions and thrilling words of praise. Out of the anniversary of Maximilian’s acceptance of the throne. Out of a medal presentation for military merit, which the generals bestowed on their Emperor in the name of the army. Out of being made a caballero of the Order of Guadalupe, especially as the monarch could give only a ribbon, since the cross must wait until his return to the capital. And being hungry certainly made pathetic his prediction that some among those present would one day wear the medal for twenty-five years of faithful service to the Empire. Being hungry took the poet-hero’s glow out of his wan cheek as he declared again that he, a Hapsburg, would never desert, for even then he heard Imperialist platoons shooting recaptured deserters. Or he thought of the wounded left to die on the grassy plain and lying there unburied. No, all the heart was being taken out of these things, for Marquez still did not come with the help he had gone to bring, and the noose was tightening day by day. Attempts were made to send some one through to depose Marquez, but each one failed. Splendid sallies resulted in prisoners taken, which were only so many more mouths to feed. The Roman aqueduct had long since been cut off, and now the wells were giving out. Mules and horses drank at the river, while sharpshooters picked them off. The feebler animals were butchered and distributed as rations. And still the sorry Marquez gave no sign. Even hope failed the empty stomachs.
But for those who waited outside as Vengeance enthroned, expectation began to take on a creepy quality. The besiegers were preparing against themselves a host, not of men, but of frightful spectres, of famished maniacs, of unearthly ghouls, who would clutch and tear with claws any man that stood between382them and a morsel of food. And the fury of desperation sharpened with each succeeding irony of a dinner hour.
The siege had endured six weeks. Marquez had been gone a month. But the Republicans held ready for whatever force he might bring. Their key to the situation was the Cimatario, the highest hill on the south. Between it and the wooded Alameda stretched the grassy plain. Republican trenches from base to shoulder of the peak opposed Imperialist trenches under the Alameda trees. Republican troops flanked the Cimatario on either side, lying in wait for Marquez. On one side Driscoll’s Grays guarded the Celaya road.
So here they were sleeping encamped on the morning of April 27, when the bugle of a patrol cracked their slumbers. They lay booted and spurred. A moment later they were horsed as well, blinking across the plain in the pearly mist of dawn. They had heard hoofbeats, sharp and dry on the high tableland. Now they saw a wild, shadowy troop, which was hotly pursuing a spectral coach of gossamer wheels, with six plunging mules frantically lashed by outriders. At once, almost, the coach was lost among the dim strangers, who snatched at flying ends of harness, and with their prize raced on again.
The Grays stared. It was like some pictured hold-up, not real. But they knew better when from among themselves a colossal yellow horse and rider dashed toward the road. Then they awoke for certain, and tore after their colonel to solve this ashen mystery so early in the morning. Was it Marquez, perhaps? But the coach white with dust, and white curtains flapping, what was that?
Striking their flank at an angle, Driscoll drove hard into the fleeing horde. The Grays saw his hand raise as a signal, whereat they did not close in, but swerved and galloped parallel, some fifty paces distant. Driscoll struggled alone against the heaving sea about him. But no cut-throat of that pirate mass383so much as drew a knife. By force of brawn, he wedged his way toward the coach, reached it, leaned forward, and caught up the curtain. And what he saw was a poke bonnet. The bonnet was a bower of lace and roses, held by a filmy saucy knot under a lady’s chin. He saw a face framed within, of a skin creamy white, of lips blood-red, of hair like copper, and he saw a pair of eyes. They were gray eyes, and as they opened suddenly and wider upon him whom she thought must be her captor, the lady started violently, her cheeks aflame. But at once the eyes snapped as in mockery, and her lips moved.
“Monsieur permits himself––” she began, but no one heard except her terrified companion within the coach. Driscoll had already dropped the curtain as a thing that burned, and was raging on again with the turbulent stream. He got to the leader of the band, and jerked the fellow’s bridle. He raised his voice, and louder than the pounding of hoofs he cursed in wrathful disgust.
“Dam’ you Rod, this here’s getting monotonous!”
The man swung in his saddle. His eyes were black-browed and savage. He was Rodrigo Galán, the terrible Don Rodrigo. But shabby, how very shabby he looked for the thief of million dollar convoys! Yet that bonanza coup of the bullion train had happened two years ago. Since then the outlaw had visited the capital. Boldly, audaciously, he had gone as a rich hacendado, and after the manner of rich hacendados he had “seen the City.” Mozos with gorged canvas bags on their shoulders had followed his stately stride into the gambling casinos. He had played with regal nerve, and on the last occasion, had flung the emptied sacks away as nonchalantly as on the first. Only, the last time, he had felt remorse that the “bank” had profited instead of Tiburcio. In that matter of the bullion convoy he had not treated Don Tiburcio as one caballero should another.
384Their horses–Rodrigo’s and Driscoll’s–were racing by bounds shoulder to shoulder. This endured for possibly the space of a second. Then Demijohn felt his rein tighten, and he took more time. Next his bit suddenly pinched, and down the old fellow came upon his front feet together, firmly planted, and sank to his haunches. Driscoll still held Rodrigo’s bridle, and Rodrigo and horse, being in air, lunged backward.
“We stop here,” Driscoll announced.
Don Rodrigo plumped down heavily in his saddle. His bristling moustache lifted over his cruel white teeth. Two hundred swarthy little demons reining in around them looked expectantly for a signal. But their chief frowned at the twelve hundred Gringo Grays hovering on his flank. They too wanted only a sign, and they outnumbered the Brigand’s six to one. But Rodrigo believed he held the advantage. First he obediently halted himself and his minions.
“Now then señor,” said he in pompous and heavy syllables, “I am at your disposition. Will your people commence the battle, or shall we?”
Driscoll appreciated the dilemma. The carriage would be in the line of fire. He had had an intuition of its occupants, and for that reason had kept back his men.
“Where was she going?” he demanded.
Rodrigo feigned surprise. “And where,” he asked, “or rather, to whom, should Your Mercy imagine?”
To Querétero! To Maximilian, of course! This, too, Driscoll had divined already.
“No matter,” he retorted shortly, “but how did you run across her this time?”
The outlaw filled his chest, “You Americans, señor, do not understand the feelings of a man bowed under a heavy wrong. You––”
385“We’ll let it go at that,” said Driscoll, with a little wave of the hand, “but–how in––”
“You scoff already, señor? But will you, at these stains of blood? Then let me say to you, señor mio, they make me remember one shameless deed for which the tyrant Maximilian must pay.”
The stains Rodrigo meant were on a little ivory cross which he had taken from his jacket. The emblem served him to lash his emotions, to goad his precious sense of wrong. He studied the cross intently; then, by a vast and excruciating effort, thrust it into Driscoll’s hand.
“Yes, yes,” he cried, “you must take it! He said so.”
“He?”
“Si, señor, he who shares my wrong, Don Anastasio Murguía.”
“Murgie!” exclaimed the bewildered American. “But–why, hombre, I haven’t seen the old skinflint since–since he and I both were court-martialled by Lopez!”
“Still I promised him to send the cross to you, because you will have a chance to give it to him. He said so.”
“Oh, he did?” But Driscoll put the trinket in his pocket, not unwilling to see more of this foolish drama in Latin-American sentiment. “Now then, Rod,” he went on impatiently, “you haven’t explained yet how you happen to find her again.”
“That,” replied the outlaw, “washispart of the bargain.”
“Whose?”
“Anastasio Murguía’s.”
“Rod, you talk like a––”
“But no, señor, it’s because you Americans cannot understand. Murguía also believes in vengeance. I haven’t seen him either, not since he sold his hacienda over a year ago. But I do know that he or some spy of his is in the capital, for a messenger from him came to me in the mountains. The386messenger said that the Marquesa d’Aumerle was leaving for Querétero. If I captured her, it would be vengeance in kind. But Murguía wanted pay for his information. He wanted that cross–it was his daughter’s–and I was to send it to him through you. Dios mio, but I had to hurry! A little more, and the Marquesa would have been inside your lines.”
“She is already,” Driscoll corrected him, “and so are you. Will you fight it out, or surrender?”
He pointed to the Grays as he spoke. They had dismounted, and each man had a rifle at aim across his saddle. It was a reminiscence out of Driscoll’s boyhood of Indians and the Santa Fé trail. But Don Rodrigo only smiled.
“You want the coach first?” he said.
“No!” Driscoll retorted. “You’re the one that’s wanted, and you can either wait for your trial, or be shot now, fighting. The coach will have to take its chances. But see here, if the firing once starts, not a thief among you will be left standing––”
It was a perilous “bluff,” and none might say if it would have broken the deadlock. But the outlaw interrupted.
“Listen! What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing. We’re only throwing a few bombs into Querétero.”
“Only!” The brigand’s eyes flashed, and his voice was filled with envy. Throwing bombs among the traitors?–and magnificence like that had grown common! Yet he, whose patriotism was a passion that fed and thrived upon itself, must be barred from such exquisite satiety.
Driscoll understood, and thought it droll. First there was that loyal Imperialist, Don Tiburcio, frothing chagrin because he had had to desert. And now here was this rabid Republican, heart broken over being outlawed from the ranks of his country’s avengers.
Again Rodrigo interrupted, more excitedly yet. “Señor,387señor, you don’t shoot them that way every day? What does it mean?”
Both gazed across the plain to the city of domes under the green hills. Driscoll’s chin raised, and he listened intently. What had commenced like indolent target practice against a beleaguered town had suddenly burst into a terrific cannonading chorus. More, there was musketry, vicious and sustained. There were troops deploying over the plain. Something critical was happening. If it were the supreme rally of the famishing Empire!
Driscoll stirred uneasily. He glanced at his outlaw. He thought of the coach. To leave her with these ruffians? To miss a fight? Here was a quandary!
“You are not going?” Rodrigo cried at him furiously. “Now, now,” he raged, “is the hour of triumph for the incarnation of popular sovereignty. Go, I say, go, the Republic needs you!”
Until those words Rodrigo had held the situation. With them he lost it, and Driscoll was master. And Driscoll grew serene, and very sweet of manner. He began filling a cob pipe. A nod of his head indicated the coach as a condition of his going.
“Look, look!” Rodrigo shouted. “Oh, que viva–they’re running! We’ve smoked them out! We’ve smoked them out!”
Driscoll swept the country with his glasses. Thousands of men were running like frightened rabbits down the Cimatario slope, and spreading as a fan over the grassy plain. Mountain pieces boomed farewell behind them, until in abject panic they cast away carbines and scrambled the faster. But other troops were pushing up the slope opposite the town, and these were ordered ranks of infantry. Up and up they climbed, to trench after trench, and the howitzers one by one stopped short their roar. When388Driscoll laid down the glasses, his face was white. Rodrigo’s glee turned to uncertainty.
“What–what––”
“Smoked out, you fool? We’re the ones smoked out!”
“But those runaways?”
“Are our own men, ten thousand of ’em, raw conscripts to support our batteries on the Cimatario.”
“But the Cimitario?” Rodrigo knew by instinct the crucial importance of the black cone.
“The Cimitario is taken by the Imperialists!”
Driscoll did not forget, however, the nearer contest, and as the Mexican grew frantic, he was the more coolly indifferent.
“Max has everything his own way now,” he added soothingly. “He can either evacuate, or go around on the north side and thrash Escobedo.”
But the Grays were clamoring for action. “By cracken, Din, hurry up there!” yelled Cal Grinders.
Driscoll raised his palm, waving the fingers for patience. He scanned the plain again. The Imperialist ranks were breaking. Hungry men rushed on the besiegers’ camps, snatching untouched breakfasts. The townsmen poured out among the uniforms, and darted greedily in every direction. The llano was alive with scurrying human beings. Driscoll could well wait for the psychology of Republican defeat on Don Rodrigo, since at the same time he awaited the effects of victory on a starving army. The Grays fretted, but they knew their colonel was never more to be depended upon than when his blood grew cold like this.
“If,” Driscoll observed pleasantly to the Mexican, “Escobedo isn’t already making tracks for San Luis––”
It was the last straw. The patriot brigand jerked off his sombrero and flung it to the ground. He gestured wildly over the plain, and he gestured in the American’s face. He choked on words that boiled up too fast.
389“You–you–traitor!” he spluttered. There was actually froth on his lips.
“We haven’t,” Driscoll reminded him with exceeding gentleness, “settled this other yet,” and again he nodded to the coach.
“That–that is why you wait?” Rodrigo had forgotten his prize entirely. “Take her, then, take her! Only go, go, kill all the traitors!”
“After you, caballero,” Driscoll returned with Mexican politeness. He wanted to be sure of the outlaw’s departure, since holding him prisoner was now out of the question. But Rodrigo chafed only to be gone. With a reed whistle he signaled his little demon centaurs, then at a touch of the spurs his horse leaped forward and all the band clattered close on his heels.
“Sure anxious to escape,” thought Driscoll. But he stared after them in wonder. Instead of turning to the safety of the mountains, they charged straight ahead on the town, straight against the Empire, and in any case, straight into the maw of justice. Behind, the coach and mules stood high and dry in the road. Driscoll was at once all action.
“Shanks,” he called.
Mr. Boone hurried to him from the Grays.
“Shanks, will you stay here with six men––”
“Jack Driscoll!”
“To watch that coach, Dan. There’s two girls in it.”
“Jack! Miss that there fight!”
“But Dan,thesegirls are friends of yours, you met them once.”
Mr. Boone started violently.
“Never mind, I’ll ask Rube Marmaduke or the Parson.”
A pitiful struggle racked Mr. Boone.
“You, you’re not fooling me, Din?” he pleaded.
390“Sure not. It’s your empress all right. It’s Miss Burt all right.”
“Then, Lawd help me, I’ll stay!–But you’d best be hustling and get to work.”
“Just a minute, Shanks, there’s the other one in the coach. She wants to go to Querétero. If she gives her word of honor–never mind, she knows honor from a man’s standpoint–if she gives her word that she brings nothing that will help ’em inside, then you can escort the coach into the town after things quiet down some. All right? Good. Then we’re off!”
Demijohn’s hoofs pelted dust balls with each impact. The Grays were ready. They surged behind. The sound of them was a swishing roar. In the apex of the blinding tempest, Driscoll sat his saddle as unmoved as an engineer in his cab. He looked ahead placidly. Empire and a prince had just triumphed. So he was going to readjust fatality. The smile touched his lips as it never had before, and hovered there in the midst of battle.
“On stubborn foes he vengeance wreak’d,And laid about him like a Tartar,But if for mercy once they squeak’d,He was the first to grant them quarter.”–Orlando Furioso.
“On stubborn foes he vengeance wreak’d,And laid about him like a Tartar,But if for mercy once they squeak’d,He was the first to grant them quarter.”
–Orlando Furioso.
Only for the moment of a cooling breath is Nature gray in Mexico. The sun’s barbed shafts had already ripped away the cloak of dawn when Driscoll and his cavaliers swept over the glaring road. But there was no longer any battle. The plain swarmed confusion only. Panic cringed before hunger. The defeated besiegers panted, stumbled, ran on again, or lay still in trembling. The victorious besieged were gorging from fingers crammed full. It was the hour for trophies. A prosperous townsman bore a stack of tortillas, and gloated leeringly as he hurried to put his treasure safely away. A dashing Hungarian with fur pelisse shouted gallant oaths at a yoke of oxen and prodded them with his curved sword, as though a creaking cart filled with corn were the precious loot of an Attila. Pueblo and soldiery tore ravenously at fortifications that had so long kept them from one savory broth. With nails alone they would demolish walls and trenches. Some lurched over fugitives in the grass, and then pinned them there with bayonets, the lust for food turning fiendishly to a lust for blood.
But what most inflamed the Grays were the captured cannon. They counted as many as twenty being dragged into the Imperialist lines. The Missourians were aggrieved. Never, never392had Joe Shelby’s brigade ever lost a gun. And as they galloped, they looked anxiously about for chances of more battle. Just then Rodrigo’s outlaw band caught their eye. These had swerved from the road out upon the field, hot to engage anything, everything. A long provision train offered first. Many carts had been loaded with Republican stores, and were being convoyed to the town by a squadron of Imperialist cavalry. It was the clash between this escort and the brigands that attracted the Grays coming on behind. But the escort wheeled and fled and the brigands pursued, slashing with machetes, and so charged full tilt into the Dragoons of the Empress who were sent to retake the abandoned prize. Red tunics mixed with ragged yellow shirts, and war-chargers and mustangs swirled together as a maelstrom. Then the Grays pounded among them, in each hand of each man a six-shooter. The red spots began to fall out of the peppered caldron. The red tunics that were left broke, retreated, ran. It became a rout. Only a few of the Empire’s best survived those ten minutes of blood-letting. Fatality? Driscoll’s lip curled. Fatality? The Dragoons, now no more, had twice held him for their bullets.
Grays and brigands chased them back toward Querétero. The fleeing remnant began yelling for help. Driscoll rose in his stirrups, and saw just ahead a large force of the enemy. It was gathered around the Casa Blanca, a little house on the plain. The large Imperialist force there was an army, nothing less, though still disordered from the late action and victory. Surrounded by a brilliant staff was a tall, golden bearded chieftain, sumptuously arrayed as a general of division, regally mounted on a cream-coated horse of Spain. He was Maximilian, viewing from there the winning of his empire. The army behind him filled his ears–“Viva Su Majestad!”
But he who had given the cue for that thrilling music now saw the convoy’s fate. He rode up and down anxiously,393striving for order in the confused ranks. He wore the green sash of a general. He had a moustache and imperial, searching black eyes, and an open brow. His fine features showed in the blend of French and Castilian blood. He was the real chieftain. He was Miramon. Impetuously he made ready to avenge the Dragoons.
These things that he saw ahead brought Driscoll to his senses. With reluctance, but instantly, he made up his mind. He held high his sabre and halted his own men, turning at the same time to collide obliquely, and purposely, against Rodrigo.
“Not that way, Rod, not that way!”
“But it’s the tyrant! It’s the tyrant!”
Driscoll got the brigand’s bridle and swung him around fiercely. “Let the poor tyrant be!” he yelled. “We’ve got to take that there Cimatario hill.”
A moment later Grays and brigands wheeled to the right and were off. Back at the Casa Blanca Maximilian lowered his glasses. “They surely, they surely are not–yes,” he cried, “theyaregoing to attack the Cimatario!”
Miramon smiled. “Then they are lunatics,” he said. “Why, Your Highness knows that we have five thousand of our best men on the Cimatario.”
“Yes,” Maximilian agreed uneasily, “but I thought I recognized the man who leads those lunatics. Do you happen to know, general, how Tampico fell?”
“Do not worry, sire,” Miramon replied, willing to humor the prince, “I will take our infantry to the Alameda and strengthen our reserve there, should anything really happen.”
Across the grassy plain raced the twelve hundred cavalry and the two hundred outlaws. They raced to attack five thousand brave men who had that morning dislodged ten thousand. Five thousand in the trenches above, fourteen hundred in the open below, such were the odds of Empire against Republic.
394Grays and brigands drew rein under the Cimatario’s west slope, and the bugle sounded to dismount.
“But señor,” Rodrigo protested, “don’t we charge straight up?”
“And not have a man left when we do get up? Here Clem,” Driscoll added to Old Brothers and Sisters, the lieutenant colonel of the Grays, “you circle round and up the other side with eight companies. Take all the horses, but leave ’em back of the hill as you go. Don’t that look like the best scheme?”
The parson’s cherubic features beamed. “Good-bye, Din,” he said. “But pshaw, I reckon–I reckon we’ll be meeting up above.” He referred, however, to the top of the Cimatario.
Four companies and Rodrigo’s band remained. These Driscoll spread out in a skirmish line that made a long beaded chain around their side of the hill. It was evidently an unfamiliar method, for the Imperialist tiradores fired down on them contemptuously. But each time, while the enemy above were reloading, the Grays and outlaws below were climbing a few yards, each man of them individually, up from behind his own particular rock. The Imperialists, it now appeared, had blundered incomprehensibly, since they had actually taken away nearly all the cannon captured on the Cimatario. But six-pound affairs from batteries in the Alameda soon began to splinter and furrow around the climbing men. One loosened boulder rolled and struck Doc Clayburn on the tip of the shoulder, bringing him down like a bag of meal. He arose, feeling himself. “Now, by the Great and Unterrified Continental––” he began, as he always did at the monotony of being hit. Then his disgust changed to wonder. “W’y,” he cried, “I’m not either, I only thought I was!”
They mounted higher, and the business grew hotter. Each man had to look to himself more and more sharply, lest he forget that economy of the individual was now the hope of the395regiment. But for all that, when a Missourian craved tobacco–it is a craving not to be denied, in no matter what danger, as most any fireman knows–he would leave cover to beg his nearest neighbor for a chew, and obtaining it, would feel the heart put back into him.
As they drew close under the first of the trenches, they concentrated for a bit of sharp in-fighting, and so suffered more. But once they provoked the next volley, they meant to rush the works. The Imperialists though were loath to squander the one ball to a carbine when Indian-like fighters like these were so near. They had one mountain piece, a brass howitzer, and the gunner stood ready, the lanyard in his hand. But he hesitated, bewildered. His targets were not twenty paces below, yet nowhere crouching behind the rocks were the foe massed together. His pride forbade that he waste twelve pounds of death on a single man.
But suddenly that happened which the gunner never in this life explained. Poised expectant in the lull of the fray, he was trembling under the tense silence, when he saw the impetuous Don Rodrigo dart up the slope, full against the muzzle. At the same instant he heard shouts of warning behind him, and he heard the tiradores there above firing at someone almost at his feet. But the figure that had scaled up the back of the hill, crawling around the trench, was already on him. He drew back his arm to drive the heavy shot through Don Rodrigo in front, but only to feel the cord in his hand part before a knife’s keen edge. With a cry of dismay he sprang to grasp the rope’s end, but as in a vision a head of curly black and an odd smile rose between, and a swinging fist of a great bared arm crashed back his chin, and he sank as a brained ox.
“Lambaste ’em, Din Driscoll!”
It was a rapturous shout, and Cal Grinders, passing Rodrigo, tumbled over the earth-heap and joined his colonel against five hundred. Behind swarmed others into the newly awakened396hell, coatless men of Saxon necks tanned a dark ruby, and in the hot Imperialist fire they settled to their work.
“By cracken, lambaste ’em! Why in all helldon’tye lambaste ’em?”
This fury boiled through oaths, unable to spend itself in blows. The tigerish rage seized on them every one. Teeth grated vengefully as men struck.
“Lambaste ’em, Din Driscoll!”
“Lambaste ’em–good–Din Driscoll!”
The yell swelled to a murderous chorus. These men did not know that they were raving. A war cry is just the natural vent. It is simply the whole pack in full cry.
But never before–for now around him there was the contrast of hate and panting and passions in ferment–had Driscoll seemed so distant a thing from flesh and the human sphere. In grime, in dust, in smoke, among faces changing demoniac wrath for the sharp, self-wondering agony of mortality, his face was cool, serene, with just the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. His own men would try to look another way, try uneasily to break the fascination of this strange warrior who led them.
The battle was short, but of the hottest. Its central point was the little brass howitzer. Driscoll, Grinders, Bledsoe, the Doc, all four pushed at the carriage or pulled at the trunnion rings, while around them, hindering them, swaying back and forth over rocks and in the ditches, the two forces battled for possession, hand to hand, with six-shooters and clubbed muskets. Grinders fell, cursing angrily. Bledsoe fell, toppling heavily his great length. The Doc fell. “By the––” he began, but got no further. He was not mistaken this time. But the gun was turned at last, and a vicious hand jerked the rope. Powder grains pierced the eyes of the nearest Imperialists. The shot tore through the mass of them. Yet Driscoll remembered most how wan, howhungry, they looked.
“Death to the traitors! Á muerte! Á mu-erte!”
397It was a heavy nasal, hurled from the lungs with that force and venom peculiar to the Spanish tongue. It came from Don Rodrigo, who had pulled the lanyard, and who now pulled it again and again, crazed first with joy, then with rage because the emptied gun would not respond.
While the combatants were so confused together, the tiradores in the upper trenches had to hold their fire, but when the defenders gave way at last, those above could wait no longer. Four thousand and more, they leaped their earthworks, and came charging down the slope on what was left of Driscoll’s six hundred.
Grays and brigands faced about, but most of all they looked beyond the enemy’s right flank, to the line of the hill’s crest there. For just beyond that jagged line and somewhere below Old Brothers and Sisters and the eight other companies must be toiling up. But they would have to appear in the interval of the Imperialists’ downward rush. Driscoll turned to his bugler. “Blow, Hanks! Blow like theverydevil!”
The blast sounded long and shrill, like a plaintive wail. The six hundred pumped lead up the hill mechanically, but their hearts were echoing the clarion’s cry for help, and rather than on the foe sweeping down over the rocks to crush them, their eyes were strained on the sun-emblazoned line against the sky. But the parson was a man. At last, just over the slope’s crest, a head appeared, a cherubic head with spectacles, and two arms waved for haste to others behind. And instantly more heads bobbed up, and more yet, until the jagged line was fairly encrusted with mouse-colored sombreros, like barnacles on a stranded keel.
From where they were the new comers began their work, lying flat on their stomachs. Once over the ridge, down each man fell and joined the chorus of musketry. Their fusilade thickened to a blanket of flame, closely woven. The host rushing down the slope forgot the tales that were told of the398marvelous sixteen-shot rifles. They thought instead that an army of Republicans, and not a man less, were upon their flank. For how else could volleys be so well sustained, how else so deadly? And how fast they themselves were dropping! The thing was not like bullets, but as the earth caving under them. The charge turned to panic. They plunged on downward, indeed, and even sheer into the cross fire of Driscoll’s six-shooters and the one howitzer. But it was headlong flight. At the trench they did not stop to grapple, but fought their way through and fled on down the hill, on across the grassy plain, nor paused until they had crowded pell-mell into the main Imperialist army drawn up before the Alameda.
Maximilian and his resplendent staff were there at the Alameda. The Emperor was perhaps less astounded than they.
“Ai, general, if youhadknown how Tampico fell!” he said to Miramon.
Yet neither was actually dismayed. The Cimatario and five thousand men had succumbed to a thousand or fifteen hundred daredevils. It was hard enough to believe, in all conscience. But the daredevils could be dislodged, and they must be, at once. Miramon’s orders rose sharply and quick, and the Empire sprang to obey. The Alameda batteries were trained on the hill, and a few moments later the guns on the roof of the La Cruz monastery were also. At the same time, the army, the entire Imperialist reserve, battalion after battalion in close, hurried ranks, set out across the grassy plain, straight toward the Cimatario’s front slope. Foot, horse, artillery, the concentrated might of the Austrian’s sceptre, was being hurled against a handful of jaded warriors. Maximilian flushed with something like shame at the thought.
Back on the slope Driscoll cried, “No, no, keep to the trenches, you fellows! This ain’tourpromenade.”
And soon, when screaming comets began to fill the air and burst around them, they were glad of the ditches. There399they waited, smoking, spitting tobacco against the torrid rocks, but with sullen eyes on the army moving nearer and nearer. Where, all this morning, was Escobedo, who, with his thousands of Republicans on the north of the town had taken no thought of the Republican stress on the south? He had not fired a shot. Yet surely he must know by this time. But no matter. Over a hundred outlaws were left, and nearly a thousand Grays. Missourians, brigands, and guerrillas of Michoacan, they were a dangerous blend.
“Got a match, Harry?” asked Driscoll of the Kansan, as he filled his cob pipe.
Theyhadto wait, you see. Yet haste was all they would have begged of the advancing Imperialist host.
The red jackets of the Dragoons–the few that were left–brightly dotted the van of the attacking thousands. On either side rode the Second and Fourth Lanciers. Behind tramped the battalions of Iturbide, of Celaya, and regiments of the line. They gained the foot of the hill and the cavalry were dismounting before they drew fire. The baptism had a sharpshooter deadliness, even at that distance, but the Imperialists waited tentatively. No, there was but one volley. When the second came, it was only after an interval long enough for reloading. Officers and men glanced at one another more hopefully. The terrified fugitives were of course mistaken, they thought. For the force above could not be large, nor yet possess the mysterious sixteen-shot rifles. The assurance gave the buoyancy of relief. To charge against carbines that made each man as sixteen were uncanny, too much like challenging the Unknown. But a thousand men who fired only every two or three minutes–an antagonist like that was quite well known to their philosophy. So breathing hard, they valiantly marched up the hill. They suffered cruelly under the scattered fusillades, yet were not materially resisted. At last they were near enough, and the bugles sounded for the final rush.
400Now what was odd, the Republicans stopped firing altogether. But they were waiting for shorter range, and a moment later, at a hundred paces, their reopening volley had all the clockwork dispatch of platoon drill. Yet the Imperialists took the dose as a thing expected, and sprang over their wounded to gain the trenches. They required only the lull of reloading. But instantly a second volley prolonged the first. The column staggered, and faces blanched. In a sudden despair they realized the enemy’s tactics, for the enemy did have those terrible rifles, after all. From the trenches a low sheet of flame had spread, searing the breasts of rank after rank that pressed against its edge. Scarlet-coated Dragoons, the last of them, flecked the rocks, and over them fell green uniformed troopers, as grass will cover a bloody field, and the Municipal Guards, swaying up from behind, paid out a sprinkling of blue–a ghastly pousse-café, as one grim jester described it afterward. The long massed lines wavered.
“They’ve stopped, they’ve stopped!” cried Rodrigo. “Now we’ll close with them, eh, señor–por Dios,now!”
“All you fellows,” shouted Driscoll, “just fill your rifles while they wait. Stopped nothing, Rod! And anyhow, who’d hold the hill if we left it? Who?”
The answer came at once, and in dramatic form. One of the pickets stationed on the flank ran among them.
“There’s another big slew of ’em a-coming!” he yelled excitedly. “Yonder, over yonder!”
Driscoll rose and followed the man to the east slope. From there he beheld an overpowering force, advancing diagonally across the llano below. It came by the Carretas road, which skirted Querétaro on that side, and it was hurrying toward the Cimatario. The colonel of Grays watched them anxiously through his glasses.
“Shucks,” he said at last, “the fight’s over. It’s Escobedo. He’s sent his reserve. Don’t you see those black shakos, Jim,401and those gray coats? They’re the Cazadores de Galeana, and the best yet. Now we’ll have someone to hold the hill!”
But getting back to the trenches, Driscoll saw that the help might not come soon enough. For however the Imperialists squandered their lives, they would yet overcrowd death. Some had already gained the first trench, and were there engaged hand to hand, with sabre and pistol. In the trenches above the Grays steadily fed the molten flame. But Driscoll chose the in-fighting, and naturally became himself the centre of the hottest patch.
“Help’s here! in five minutes, just five minutes!” he spoke right and left to his men, as a carpenter will converse and hammer at the same time. For the outnumbered Grays it was the help arrived already.
The Imperialist cannon had of necessity ceased firing, so what should be the consternation of the attacking column to have a shell fall among them from the rear! All eyes turned, and a murmur of panic rose. It was not that their own batteries had made a mistake, but that there had not been any mistake. The reserve sent by Escobedo, hearing the battle, had wheeled and rushed straight down the centre of the plain on the chance of giving quicker assistance. Once in sight of the trenches, though still considerably to the right of the hill, they had unlimbered a gun, while cavalry and infantry pushed on to the rescue. Not to be caught between trenches and plain, the Imperialists acted with soldiery decision. Their clarions sounded retreat.
“Now it’sourturn!” shouted Driscoll, and with the parson and the Kansan and the outlaw chief, and guerrillas and Missourians pouring out of their ditches, he chased down hill the concentrated might of an Empire. So closely was that chasing performed that pistol flashes burned into standards and uniforms.
Maximilian and Miramon and the high officers of the realm402were still at their post of observation in front of the Alameda. For the third time that morning they faced Imperial cohorts hurled back upon them by a man named Driscoll. Miramon reproached himself bitterly. His plans to intercept Escobedo’s reserve on the north had failed. The Emperor’s pallid features were drawn with the tensity of a big loser. Yet in the soft blue eyes there flashed a chivalrous wonder at an enemy’s valiant deed.
On the llano fugitives and pursuers mingled as one in the human wave of confusion. Escobedo’s cavalry had overtaken the mêlée, and blended with the rear of the fleeing column, until it seemed likely that both must enter the town together. But a charge of grape, fired obliquely from the Alameda, mowed a path between them–a Spartan business, for it reaped Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to draw back to the Cimatario.
As Escobedo’s reserve occupied the hill, Driscoll marched his own force behind the same to get his horses there. But the mustangs of the brigands had disappeared, and far to the southwest were the brigands themselves, moving swiftly over the plain toward the mountains. They hardly numbered two-score now, and at that distance seemed a few men herding a drove of empty saddles. The late indignant patriot, Don Rodrigo, had changed back to outlaw. As another Cid, he might have looked for pardon from a grateful country, but possibly he feared the Roman justice of Juarez too much to risk it. Besides, a man will not lightly give up his career. That same night Rodrigo lay again among the sierras, quite ready for the first bullion convoy or beautiful marchioness passing by.
Shells and minié balls were yet dropping perfunctorily, and403the llano between hill and town was still a dangerous place enough, but scattered here and there were a few of both sides looking for their wounded, and often themselves going down before the aim of sharpshooters. Stiffening bodies lay under the trampled grass in every varied horror of mutilation, and glassy eyes peered unseeing upward through the stalks, like the absurd and ghastly contrast of a horrible dream. But among them were the stricken living in as varied an agony, of raw wounds stung by gnats, of pain cutting deep to vitality, of thirst, of the broiling sun, of a buzzing fly, or of an intolerable loneliness there with death. Groans rose over the plain, and guided the searchers. Driscoll had already found many of his men in this way. Once he heard his own name. The voice was weak, but there was something vaguely familiar to it, and involuntarily he held his pistol against treachery as he parted the grass and revealed a wounded man at his feet. It was a piteously famished body that raised itself a little by one hand. It was a soul-tenanted death-head that crooked gruesomely down on the shoulder and lifted its eyes to Driscoll’s in greeting. They were glowing coals, those eyes, glowing with the virile fire of twenty men, however wasted the face or tightly drawn the yellow parchment skin.
“Murgie!”
Driscoll’s exclamation was a shudder rather than the surprise of recognition. What could it be that had grown so–soterriblein the weazen, craven miser! And to find the abject little coward on a battlefield, and wounded! An occasional bomb even then screeched overhead. And he was clothed in uniform, a soldier’s uniform, he, Don Anastasio!
“Gra-cious!” Driscoll muttered.
More and more stupefying, the uniform was not Republican, but Imperialist. There were the green pantaloons with red stripes, the red jacket, the white shoes, the white kepí, of the Batallon del Emperador–a ludicrous martial combination, but404pathetic on an aged, withered man. The Batallon del Emperador? Driscoll remembered. They were the troop that had surrounded Maximilian during the recent battle in front of the Alameda, and Murguía had fallen on the very spot. The venomous Republican was then become one of the Emperor’s bodyguard!
As the Republican, so also was the coward gone. The gaunt little old Mexican seemed oblivious of peril, as fever blinds one to every nearest emotion. There was even a grimness in the shifting gaze. And a certain merciless capacity, born of unyielding resolve–born of an obsession, one might say–was there also. He could have been some great military leader, cruel and of iron, if those eyes were all. Little shriveled Don Anastasio, he had no sense of present danger, nor of the red blood trickling.
“That’s bad, that,” said Driscoll, overcoming his repugnance. “Here, I’ll get you taken right along to our surgeons.”
But Murguía shrank from the offer as though he feared the Republicans of all monsters.
“No, no,” he protested feebly, yet with an odd ring of command. “Some one on–on my side will find me.”
“But you called?” Driscoll insisted.
“Yes, you–have heard from Rodrigo Galán? He was to have sent you a–to have sent you something for me.”
More and more of mystery! Rodrigo had said that Driscoll would see Murguía to give him the ivory cross, and so it had come to pass. But the battle, the old man’s wound, surely these things were not prearranged only that a trinket might be delivered.
“How was I to see you?” Driscoll asked abruptly.
Murguía started, and there was the old slinking evasion.
“There, there,” said Driscoll hastily. “Don’t move that way, you’ll bleed to death! Here, take it, here it is.”
Murguía clutched the ivory thing in his bony fingers.
405“María, María de la Luz,” he fell to murmuring, gazing upon the cross as though it were her poor crushed face. In the old days she had made him forget avarice or fear, and now, before this token of her, the hardness died out of his eyes and they swam in tears. Driscoll gazed down on him pityingly. The old man was palsied. He trembled. There passed over him the same spasm, so silent, so terrible, as on the night of her death, when he had sat at the court martial, his head buried in his arm.
“Rod said you would want it,” Driscoll spoke gently. Then he moved away. An Imperialist officer was approaching over the field who would bring the help which Murguía refused to accept of the Republicans.
Driscoll looked back once. The Imperialist officer was carrying Murguía into the town. He was a large man, and had red hair. His regimentals were gorgeous. There seemed to be something familiar about him, too. Greatly puzzled, Driscoll unslung his glasses, and through them he recognized Colonel Miguel Lopez. Lopez, the former colonel of Dragoons, now commanded the Imperialist reserve, quartered in the monastery of La Cruz around the person of their sovereign. But Lopez had once condemned Murguía to death. A strange solicitude, thought Driscoll, in such a high and mighty person for a little, insignificant, useless warrior as poor Murgie. A strange, a very strange solicitude, and Driscoll could not get it out of his head.