THE RED MONGREL
"Be this the whetstone of your sword; let grief
Convert 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. But 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 Galan at Tampico, and in so far aiding the
abduction of Mademoiselle d'Aumerle.
"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 Eloin 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?"
"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.
Murguia, 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 Murguia 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 Senorita d'Aumerle, which I have held till now for
this purpose. Read it, and you will note that though the marquesa bears
out the Senor Ney, she further testifies to the prisoner having later
saved her from this very Rodrigo Galan at peril to himself. Bien,
senores, 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.
Murguia'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 Murguia 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
Murguia'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----"
Murguia 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, his sentence would be
confirmed, he would be shot. Nothing of this he doubted. And he would
never see her again.
Murguia stretched out his arms toward the president of the court, "You
will let me go to her, senor? Your Mercy will let me go to her?" He
murmured her name over and over, "Maria de la Luz! Maria--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? Senor,
you _will_ let 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, Senor Murguia," 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, senor, answer!"
The father gazed, wonderingly, jealously. How should an elegant officer
from the City and the Court know aught of Maria 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."
Murguia 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 Murguia, "I, senor!"
"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 Murguia'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 it _this_ way."
"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 just now, 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 Galan, 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, senor, 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."
On returning Lopez sent the guards away, and he and Murguia 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 Murguia----"
Here the speaker paused abruptly, and his faded eyes shifted and
hardened.
"And Murguia, 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."