THE COSSACKS AND THEIR TIGER COLONEL
"Ah, Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead;
There's music around when my barrel's in tune."
--_Song of the Fallen Dragoon._
Din Driscoll tumbled himself over among the rocks. "There, I'm fixed,"
he grunted, as he squatted down behind his earthworks. "Plenty of
material here"--he meant the cartridges which he poured from his coat
pockets into his hat--"and plenty out there too"--indicating the Hydra
heads--"and my pipe--I'll have a nice time." He got to work busily.
In the door of the shack Jacqueline saw the campaign for her possession
begin. Don Rodrigo had fled to the corner of the shack, taking his horse
with him. The hut of bamboo and thatch was no protection against
Driscoll's fire, but the two girls, though inside the hut, were between
and afforded a better screen. Jacqueline did not, however, hold that
against her Fra Diavolo. To save himself behind a woman was quite in
keeping with his sinister role. And she, as an artist, could not
reproach him, and as a woman she did not care. But the American's
running away--now that was out of character, and it disappointed her.
She heard Rodrigo bellowing forth an order, and she saw five or six
guerrillas rise out of the cacti and spring toward her. But the constant
shadow of self-introspection haunted her even then. In her despair, and
worse, in her disgust, feeling already those filthy hands upon her, she
yet appraised this jewel among ecstatic shudders, and she knew in her
heart that she would not have had it otherwise.
"Oh, am I ever to _live_!" she moaned in startled wonderment at
herself. "Always a spectator, always, even of myself!--God, dost thou
know? It is a robbery of living!" And the vagabonds were twenty paces
away!
Something hurt her hand, she opened her clenched palm; it was the horn
handle of Driscoll's knife. Had she really thought to defend herself
with that inadequate thing? "Poof!" She tossed it from her, vexed at her
own unconscious heroics. Then two dark arms reached out, nearer and
nearer, and ten hooked fingers blurred her vision. But the arms shot
upward, the fingers stiffened, and a body splashed across the doorway at
her feet with the sound of a board dropped on water.
"Ai, poor man!"
She was on her knees, bending over him. But a second of the vermin
lurched against her, and he too lay still. A pistol report from the
cliff was simultaneous with each man's fall. Both were dead. A third
sank in the trail with a shattered hip, and another behind knew the
agony of a broken leg. The marksman's mercy was evidently tempered
according to distance. For, having the matter now under control, he
nonchalantly cracked only shin bones. Fra Diavolo from his shelter
roared commands and curses, but not another imp would show himself.
Crouched jealously, they chose rather to besiege their lone enemy on the
cliff.
"Must have howitzers," muttered Driscoll. The soft lead, bigger than
marbles, went "Splut! Splut!" against the rock on all sides of him,
flattening with the windy puff of mud on a wall. But he was well
intrenched, and as the guerrillas were also, he lighted his pipe and
smoked reflectively. But after awhile he perceived a slight movement,
supplemented by a carabine. One of the besiegers was working from
boulder to boulder, parallel with the trail. He did it with infinite
craft. At first the fellow crawled; then, when out of pistol range, he
got to his feet and ran. Still running, he crossed the trail at a safe
distance beyond the hut, and began working back again, this time along
the cliff, and toward Driscoll. When about a hundred yards away, he
disappeared; which is to say, he lowered himself into a little ravine
that thousands of rainy seasons had worn through from the foothills. But
almost at once his head and shoulders rose from the nearer bank, and
Driscoll promptly fired. The shot fell short. A pistol would not carry
so far; which was a tremendously important little fact, since the other
fellow was aiming a rifle. The bullet from that rifle neatly clipped a
prickly pear over Driscoll's head. The strategist certainly knew his
business. There was a familiar shimmer of silver about his high peaked
hat. Yes surely, he was Don Tiburcio, the loyal Imperialist of the
baleful eye. No doubt the malignant twinkle gleamed in that eye now,
even as the blackmailer bit a cartridge for the next shot. A victim who
had only pistols, and at rifle range, and with not a pebble for shelter
from the flank bombardment--it was assuredly a situation to tickle Don
Tiburcio.
Now Driscoll's point of view was less amusing. To change his position,
he must expose himself to a fusilade from across the way. And if he
tried to rush his friend of the gully, the brigands meantime would carry
off the two girls. A gentleman's part, therefore, was to stay where he
was and be made a target of. But he varied it a little. At Don
Tiburcio's second shot, he lunged partly to his feet and fell forward as
though mortally wounded. He lay quite still, and soon Don Tiburcio came
creeping toward him. Don Tiburcio was thinking of his lost toll-moneys
that should be on the corpse. Driscoll waited, his nerves alert, his
pistols ready. But just beyond range, the blackmailer paused.
"Go for the women, you idiots," he yelled. "The Gringo's dead."
The idiots verified the title straightway, for up they popped from
behind their boulders and started for the shack.
"'Possuming's no use," Driscoll muttered, then fired. The guerrillas got
back to cover quickly enough, and so did Don Tiburcio, grinning over his
stratagem. In his arroyo again, he proposed to make the Gringo as a
sieve. Each bullet from his carabine twanged lower and lower. "Ouch!"
ejaculated Driscoll. One had furrowed his leg, and it hurt. He looked
anxiously, to see if the Mexican were lowering his aim yet more. An inch
meant such a great deal just then. But a tremendous surprise met him.
For Don Tiburcio had changed his mind. The rascal was firing in another
direction entirely, firing rapturously, firing at his very allies, at
the little imps themselves among the boulders and nettles. And the
little imps were positively leaping up to be shot. They ran frantically,
but straight toward the traitor, and on past him up the trail. The Storm
Centre could not shoot lunatics any more than he could babies. He only
stared at them open mouthed.
"Los Cosacos!--El Tigre! Los Cosacos!" they yelled, scrambling out upon
the road, bleeding, falling, praying, and kissing whatever greasy amulet
or virgin's picture they owned.
Then there beat into Driscoll's ears the furious clatter of hoofs. It
deafened him, the familiar, glorious din of it. The blood raged in his
veins like fiery needle points. To see them--the cavalry, the cavalry!
Then they were gone--a flashing streak of centaurs, a streamer of red in
a blur of dust, maniac oaths, and pistol shots, and sweeping sabres.
Hacked bodies were sucked beneath the swarm as saplings under an
avalanche. Driscoll sprang up and gazed. Through eddying swirls he still
could see red sleeved arms reach out, and lightning rays of steel, and
half-naked fleeting creatures go down, and never a jot of the curse's
speed abate.
"Lordy, but Old Joe should 'a seen it!" he fairly shouted. He was
thinking of Shelby, of the Old Brigade back in Missouri; daredevils,
every one of them.
Don Tiburcio had sighted the vengeful horde from afar, and had
recognized them, since he was, in fact, one of their scouts. They were
the Contra Guerrillas, the Cossacks, the scourge wielded by the French
Intervention and the Empire. And they were Don Tiburcio's cue to
loyalty. For seeing them, he began firing on his late friends, the
brigands. Yet he spared their Capitan. At the first alarm Fra Diavolo
had vaulted astride his black horse, and Tiburcio darting out, had
caught his bridle, and turned him into the dry bed of the arroyo. Others
of the fugitives tried to escape by this same route, but Tiburcio fought
them off with clubbed rifle, and in such occupation was observed by him
who led the Cossacks, who was a terrible old man, and a horseman to give
the eye joy. At the gully he swerved to one side, and let the hurricane
pass on by.
"Sacred name of thunder," he cursed roundly, "a minute later and----"
"Si, mi coronel," the faithful Tiburcio acknowledged gratefully, "Your
Excellency came just in time."
The colonel of Contra Guerrillas frowned a grim approval for his scout's
handiwork of battered skulls. He was a man of frosted visage, a grisly
Woden. The hard features were more stern for being ruggedly venerable.
His beard was wiry, hoary gray, through whose billowy depth a long black
cigar struck from clenched teeth. If eyes are windows of the soul, his
were narrow, menacing slits, loopholes spiked by bristling brows. Two
deep creases between the eyes furrowed their way up and were lost under
an enormously wide sombrero. This sombrero was low crowned, like those
worn farther to the south, and ornately flowered in silver. His chest
was crossed with braid, cords of gold hung from the right shoulder to
the collar, and the sleeves were as glorious as a bugler's. His
brick-red jacket fell open from the neck, exposing the whitest of linen.
His boots were yellow, his spurs big Mexican discs. Altogether the blend
in him of the precise military and the easy ranchero was curiously
picturesque. But Colonel Dupin, the Tiger of the Tropics, was a curious
and picturesque man. His medals were more than he could wear, and each
was for splendid daring. But on a time they had been stripped from him.
It happened in China. He had made a gallant assault on the Imperial
Palace, but he had also satiated his barbarian soul in carnage and
loaded his shoulders with buccaneering loot. And though he wondered at
his own moderation, a court martial followed. However, Louis Napoleon
gave him back his medals, and sent him to Mexico to stamp out savagery
by counter savagery.
"There were two accomplices in this business," the Tiger was saying,
"one a trader, Murguia----"
"Killed him my very first shot," lied Tiburcio. He would save his golden
goose of the golden eggs.
"And the other, an American?"
"Got away with the others, senor." Again Tiburcio's reason was obvious.
The American, if taken, might tell things.
"And"--Dupin gripped his cigar hungrily--"and Rodrigo?"
For answer the scout waved a hand vaguely up the trail.
"None went that way?" and the Colonel jerked his head toward the ravine.
"No, none. Your Mercy saw me driving them back."
"Quick, then, on your horse! We're losing time."
Don Tiburcio was reluctant. He had not yet recovered his money
from the American. "But the women, mi coronel? They are there, in that
shack. Hadn't I better stay----?"
"Jacqueline, you mean? Of course the little minx is in trouble, the
second she touches land. But you come with me. She shall have another
protector."
Tiburcio knew the Cossack chief. He obeyed, and both men galloped away
after the chase.
[Illustration: "COLONEL DUPIN"
"The Tiger of the Tropics ... the chief of Contra Guerrillas"]
They had not gone far when they passed Michel Ney swiftly returning. He
was the protector Dupin had in mind. He had seen Jacqueline in the
doorway of the hut as he stormed past with the Contra Guerrillas, but he
had been too enthusiastic to stop just then. He was a Chasseur
d'Afrique, and to be a Chasseur d'Afrique was to ride in a halo of
mighty sabre sweeps. And Michel had fought Arabs too--but the good
simplicity of his countenance was woefully ruffled as he turned back
from that charge of the Cossacks.
"Michel!" cried Jacqueline, stepping over the forms of men before the
hut, and forgetting them. The natty youth was torn, rumpled, grimy. The
sky-blue of his uniform was gray with dust. But to see him at all proved
that he had escaped Fra Diavolo's web in Tampico. And the relief! It
made her almost gay. "Ah, Michel--le beau sabreur!--and did you enjoy
it, mon ami?"
He alighted at her feet, and raised her hand to his lips.
"Monsieur," she demanded quick as thought, "my trunk?"
"Mon Dieu, mademoiselle, I did well to bring myself."
"You should have brought my trunk, sir, first of all. Deign to look at
this frock! No, no, don't, please don't. But tell me everything. What
could have happened to you last night? Why did you not meet me this
morning?"
His story was brief. Of his contemplated strategy at Tampico, there had
been a most lugubrious botching. The night before, when he started to
the fort for aid, Fra Diavolo's little Mexicans had waylaid him, bound
him, and dragged him back to the cafe, where Jacqueline that very moment
reposed in slumber. And there, in a back room without a window, he had
gritted his teeth until morning. As for the sailors, who were to return
to the ship for her trunk; well, more little Mexicans had fired on them
from the river bank. The small boat, riddled with shot, had sunk, and
the sailors, splashing frantically to keep off the sharks, had gained
the shore opposite. But they could neither get word to the ship, nor
cross back to Tampico.
"Yet," demanded Jacqueline, "how could you know all this, there in your
prison room?"
"Am I saying I did, name of a name? Well, those poor sailors wandered
about all night in the swamps across the river, and this morning they
ran into Colonel Dupin and his Contras, and the colonel was frothing
mad. He had only just stumbled on the bodies of Captain Maurel and some
of his men, who had been ambushed and murdered. Poor Maurel was dangling
from a tree among the vultures. Others were mutilated. Some had even
been tortured. And all were stripped, and rotting naked. Mon Dieu, mon
dieu, but it's an inferno, this country!"
"Yes, yes, but how did they find you?"
"Colonel Dupin simply brought the sailors back to Tampico and searched
that cafe, and got me out. The proprietor wasn't thought to be any too
good an Imperialist, anyway. They shot him, and then we came right along
here."
"Very nice of you, I am sure."
"Not at all. Dupin isn't thinking of anybody but your Fra Diavolo, who
must have killed Captain Maurel.--Was he here?"
"Who? Don Rodrigo?"
"Don Rodrigo?"
"Of course. He's the same as Fra Diavolo."
"You mean that bandit," cried Ney, "that terrible Rodrigue? But he is
dead, don't you remember, Fra Diavolo said so?"
"Stupid! Fra Diavolo is Don Rodrigo himself."
"Not dead then? And I'll meet him yet! But," and his sudden hope as
suddenly collapsed, "Dupin will get him first."
"I think not, because Rodrigo did not take the trail."
"Then which way did he go? Quick, please, mademoiselle, which way?"
"He turned off into that arroyo."
"Oh, what chance, what luck!" But the boy stopped with his foot in the
stirrup. "No, mademoiselle, I can't leave you!"
"Oh yes you can. I daresay there's another champion about." She glanced
up at the cliff. "And besides, all danger is past. The donkey caravan is
still here, and for company, I have Berthe, of course."
"Really, mademoiselle?"
"Yes, Michel, really."
"Good, I'm off! But we will meet you at--Dupin just told me--at the next
village on this same trail. Now I'm off!" He was indeed. "I say,
mademoiselle," he called back, "I'm glad we left the ship, aren't you?"
Jacqueline turned hastily her gaze from the cliff. He startled her,
expressing her own secret thought.
Chasseur and steed vanished in the ravine, and she smiled. "The God of
pleasant fools go with him," she murmured.