The dumfounded Liberals scratched their heads. They were Republicans,

and here was a republic, and naturally it bothered them. But when they

had gotten it tangled unmistakably enough, they decided that they wanted

surrender anyhow, if the senores Tampicoistas would have the kindness

... and on refusal from the fort, they withdrew to load their siege

guns.

They had sent a shot or two and received a dozen, when an Indito,

emaciated and loathsome from scales of dirt, dashed from nowhere through

the cross-fire and pounded at the fortress door. Driscoll ordered him

admitted. The first President of the Tampico Republic seemed

extraordinarily anxious about this ragged vagabond, especially as he had

perceived a second one, likewise from nowhere, dash into the Liberal

camp. Ten minutes later the enemy ceased firing. "Now come, all of you,"

Driscoll then said to his little army, "and hear what he's got to tell.

I reckon he's a Shorter Yet."... "From Shorty, then!" exclaimed his men.

And so it proved, for the Indito produced the usual bit of parchment,

signed El Chaparrito and countersigned Benito Juarez, Libertad y

Reforma. The message thereon demanded why the Coronel Driscoll and his

new recruits for the cause had turned against it.... "'Cause we don't

hanker after hanging," Cal Grinders interposed.... Was it, Driscoll

continued to read, because they thought they had lost favor by fighting

Rodrigo Galan? If so, there was naught against them, nothing, because

President Juarez had outlawed Galan for robbing a bullion convoy. It was

true that the writer of the parchment had used the said Rodrigo, in the

hope of capturing Maximilian, but the bandit was not for that reason a

Republican officer.... "In other words," lisped Crittenden of Nodaway,

"we're in-lawed because the good patriot Don Rodrigo is away

outlawed."... "Therefore," the parchment went on, "His Excellency the

Presidente through the writer has herewith sent a message to General

Pavon of the besieging camp to comply with whatever Their Mercies the

Americans may deem fit to require. Further, knowing the temper of Their

Mercies, General Pavon is ordered to at once cease operations and leave

Their Mercies in possession."

The Missourians looked at one another and were reluctant. They hated to

forego a battle. But it takes two sides to make one. Not outlawed, not

even threatened, they had no excuse to hold against the Liberals.

"But," said Crittenden, "as an ally of this sister Republic, we'll still

have our fighting."

"Well," demanded Driscoll, "what will you ask for?"

"Our Cordova lands back, after we've won them from the Empire."

"And," put in Grinders, "equality. We want republican equality."

"Then we'll all be privates?"

"No sir-ee, by cracken! Equality high up, that's what! We'll be

colonels, breveted colonels, every last one of us--Colonel Driscoll,

Colonel Grinders, Colonel Brothers and Sisters, Colonel----"

"That's easy," said Driscoll smiling. "Now I'll go and fix it up with

General Pavon, before he gets away."

... To conclude this chapter on the Missourians' Republic, there is yet

a word, which perhaps is also explanation of the saddened change that

had come over Din Driscoll since that night after the battle with Don

Rodrigo. It must be remembered that the peerless lad had just won his

old comrades to the Mexican Republican cause. While yet rejoicing that

here he more than made good the three hundred Liberals he had helped to

capture when a captain under the Empire, he found that he had only cast

his recruits out of the pale of law, first against the Empire, and then

against the Republic.... Then he proposed their own republic, and for

themselves they took Tampico from the French. But why? What was the real

object in Driscoll's innermost thought? The suspicion arises: Was it to

win a peace-offering wherewith to make friends again with the Liberals?

Such an explanation of his otherwise wild scheme is but a theory, but

the theory fits, for John D. Driscoll, though as reckless as any and

quick for any forlorn hope, was, when a leader, scrupulously practical.

The above suggestion, moreover, is apropos in these later days, when the

Tampico Republic has become to be folklore throughout Missouri, and when

our cousins, the Kentuckians, even those proud colonels by acclamation,

cannot rank beside these five hundred colonels scattered over the sister

state; so that, when a stranger questions, a Missourian answers: "He a

colonel? W'y yes, of course, sir. And, by God sir, a Tampico colonel,

too! Yes, one of the five hundred!" and the stranger's eyes bulge as he

takes off his hat.

[The deposition of Meagre Shanks ends here.]

CHAPTER VIII

ROYAL RESOLUTION

"... O restless fate of pride,

That strives to learn what Heaven resolves to hide."--_The Iliad._

On returning to the capital, Jacqueline did not once set foot in any

Imperial palace, but she established her own salon of a grande dame, and

there installed herself mid a simple elegance. What was left of the

mortgaged chateau in the Bourbonnais went to pay for it. Jacqueline

would accept not a louis out of Napoleon's Black Chest. A French

gentlewoman, she impoverished herself to work for France. And when, a

little later, Napoleon dishonored his own name and that of France in his

dealings with Maximilian, she thanked the instinct that had kept her

free. Puddles muddied one's skirt so! The valiant maid broke her sword.

She would serve no longer. At least, she was quite certain that she

would not.

Napoleon's shame lay in this. Maximilian had accepted his harsh

ultimatum regarding the Mexican customs, and in return for such

humiliation he depended on the presence of the French troops for yet

another year. But the United States threatened war, and Napoleon

cringed. He would withdraw the troops immediately. He would abandon

Maximilian, treaty or no treaty. Thus the quiet forces in the American

Legation at Paris battled against the proud House of Orleans. The

princess of that House failed. She could not save her husband's throne,

and her own. Her mind gave way. She became a raving maniac. So much for

Charlotte's mission.

With the news Maximilian was a broken man. He seemed to remember his

promise to rejoin her in Europe, for he set out coastward and left the

marshal a letter that was virtually his abdication. Yet in the Hot

Country he stopped for his health. An Austrian frigate waited for him.

But behind him was his capital. Would he return? History will never

know, perhaps, the soul-despairing network of intrigue and

counter-intrigue that wound and tightened about the young sapling roots

that would strike deep in an unnourishing soil and become a dynastic

oak. The rabid clericals, who were Maximilian's ministers at the time,

thought their puppet gone, and in terror of an avenging Republic they

resigned. But Bazaine, urged to it by Padre Fischer, prevailed upon them

to remain, and Fischer gave his word that the puppet would not escape.

So France lost another chance to take back the Mexican Empire, and

thereby pave a way out of her shame. For while Maximilian recuperated,

he reconsidered. Clerical generals assured him of armies, the ministers

talked eloquently of treasure from the Church coffers. The fat padre

manipulated generals and ministers and Emperor, He was supreme. None

might come near the royal ear except at his pleasure.

It was at this time, about the first of the year, some six months after

Charlotte had sailed to Europe, and only a few weeks before the French

would do the same, that one evening Jacqueline's footman brought her a

plainly sealed envelope, without crest, without writing. She tore it

open, and started as she looked at a simple autograph on the card

inside.

"His--this gentleman, Tobie, you admitted him?"

The well-trained servant stood impassive. "What would madame have?" he

replied. "The man walked in like a lord, keeping his face hid in a

cloak. But if madame----"

"Was there a carriage?"

"No, madame, but I noticed a saddle horse at a little distance, held by

a mounted soldier with a carbine. But if madame----"

"He is in the drawing-room, then?"

"Oui, madame, and without removing his Mexican sombrero. But if madame

desires that this citizen find himself--h'm--pressed to go----"

"Tobie! No, on the contrary, you will permit him to wait undisturbed,

until I come."

A few minutes later Jacqueline beheld a tall figure in elegant charro

garb striding the length of her salon. As she entered, her guest threw

off sombrero and Spanish cloak, and revealed the drawn and troubled

features of the Emperor of Mexico.

"Your Majesty has returned to His capital!" she exclaimed. "Then it is

true----"

"That I shall cling to my play-empire? But I do not know yet,

mademoiselle, I do not know yet. If I did, I should not be here, here in

your house for the first time, and against your wishes----"

"Will Your Highness be seated?"

Maximilian flung himself wearily into an armchair. The fire of the

enthusiast had died out of his eyes, and the fire of fever had left them

faded. They reminded one of the blue of old-fashioned china.

"But why----" she began.

"Why come to you, you mean? I don't know; instinct, I suppose."

"Isn't that rather vague? Your Imperial Highness returns to the City, to

his palace----"

"Not to his palace, mademoiselle, not while it would seem a mockery of

my poor imperial state, but to an hacienda in the suburbs. If I enter my

Mexican palace again, it will be because I have decided to remain an

emperor."

"And for the reason that you have _not_ so decided, you do me the

honor----"

"I do myself the service, mademoiselle. I can bear this torment of

indecision no longer, and you can help me, for you, dear lady, see

clearly where the vision of others is distorted. The enthusiasm of the

others is unsafe. Yes," he sighed, with a little superior air of

resignation to all human foibles, "those on whose loyalty I can depend

are indeed few, but I am thankful that among them are my ministers, and

my faithful secretary, Father Augustin Fischer----"

"Then why, in heaven's name, does Your Highness come to me?"

"Instinct, or--perhaps it's mania. Something has forced me to learn what

_you_ would say."

Jacqueline's foot--a small digression, at most--was slippered in blue,

and this she pillowed on a cushion of red. And on another cushion she

settled her elbow; and the sleeve of the chemisette, or blouse, or

whatever the high-necked filmy white garment was, fell away, revealing a

rounded forearm clasped in a band of gold. And resting her chin on her

thumb, she regarded the young prince thoughtfully. In her look there may

have been a sedate twinkle of amusement, but all was gently, pityingly

sympathetic.

"Let me know," she said, "more of the doubts that trouble Your

Highness."

Unerringly she touched the right chord. Doubts, yes, doubts of a broken

dreamer. Illusions shattered as bubbles. A dweller in an ideal shadow,

believing that subjects needed only lofty phrases, Maximilian was

finding himself tragically maladjusted to the modern day in which he

lived. But as the words tumbled from his lips in the passionate relief

of unburdening, it quickly appeared that his misgivings arose only

because he had fallen short of Dark Age standards. He recalled bitterly

how, unlike the illustrious among his ancestors, he had not stirred

until others had won his crown for him. But destiny was kind. He had the

chance for redemption. To hold his empire now depended on him alone. He

would mount his horse, give to the light a true Hapsburg blade, and

valiantly ride forth to conquer or perish, and in any hazard be worthy

of his House.

Then, without abrupt change, he talked of Austria's late woes. Had he

but commanded his country's ships at Lissa! Could he but have risked his

life at Sadowa! And moreover, he was still needed over there. But in

some quick recollection a moisture dimmed the blue eyes. He drew from

his vaquero jacket a dispatch. It was from Franz Josef. If Maximilian

returned to Austria, the message ran, then he must leave behind the

title of Emperor--leave behind even the title!

"And will that hurt so much?" asked Jacqueline.

The Ritual again! For it a man withheld asylum from his brother.

"Is there no mother," cried the exasperated girl, "to spank both your

Majesties?"

"'Tis of Her Serene Highness----" Maximilian began with dignity.

"Highness? Yes, I forgot, but not high enough to chide majesty, though

she be a mother."

"Yet she has only just warned me of her deep displeasure if--No, her

message shall wait. I wish to hear first what you think. Tell me, shall

I go, or shall I stay? Tell me, tell me, and why!"

Feverishly the man craved one frank word. There was in his look the

prayer of a desperate gambler who watches a card poised between the

dealer's fingers. Jacqueline had one answer only. But exactly how to

express it, lest she be wrongly taken, made her pause.

"In the first place," she began slowly, "there is only a single

consideration involved, and in that lies the solution of Your Majesty's

doubts. I mean the consideration of honor. Now if Your Highness

is--_whipped_ off his throne--_that_ is ignominy--But wait,

wait, I am not through. I----"

"Almost my mother's words!" he cried triumphantly. And with a hand that

trembled, he got out the letter from that Archduchess Sophia who had

given one son a crown and loved this other as her darling.

"'Rather than suffer humiliation by a French policy'" he read from her

letter, "'stay, stay, though you be buried under the walls of Mexico!'"

"But----" Jacqueline interposed. She had been taken amiss after all.

"You too bid me stay," he insisted. "But I might have known. I might

have known. One who never errs said that this would be your counsel. The

Padre is wonderful--wonderful!"

Father Fischer, of course! What else? How consummate was the snake in

his cunning! He counted on honesty and nobility in another, though

having none himself. He knew Jacqueline. He thought that, both good and

frank, she must advise the Emperor as his mother had done. Accordingly,

when Maximilian became afflicted with doubts, the priest allowed him to

go to Jacqueline. She would be an accomplice despite herself. Only his

judgment did not go quite far enough. Jacqueline had not spoken

_all_ her mind.

Imperiously she compelled Maximilian's attention. "I said ignominy,

yes," she persisted, "but I would have added that honor--the modern and

the decent--and the only courage, lies in facing this same ignominy.

Listen. If the least of impure ambition enters in your decision to

remain, then for each death in the civil war that must result, Your

Highness may hold himself to account, and so be held by history. Now,"

she went on, unmoved by the fact that he had winced, "the question

remains with Your Highness--does aught besides honor hold you to stay?"

To himself he answered as she spoke, and guilt confessed mounted his

brow.

"But there," she said, "Father Fischer will interpret the will of the

Almighty. Before Your Imperial Highness retires to-night, my words will

be forgotten."

The lash fell on flesh already raw and smarting. To predict that he

would change yet again, when to change he branded himself a wilful

murderer--no! That was more than he could endure. She must not think

that of him. He held out his hand. "Jeanne!" he murmured imploringly.

"Don't!" she cried, "Don't call me that!"

Then she bit her lip, and her fury turned against herself. "Jeanne" was

feminine and French for "John," which was masculine and--American. This

important discovery she had made months ago when riding beside a man

whose horse was "Demijohn." As a girl in love, she had found a cozy joy

in their names being the same. But for that very reason any recollection

of it, since then, was the less to be borne.

Blushing indignantly, she saw that Maximilian was regarding her with a

puzzled expression. Manlike, he referred it to himself, and suddenly, he

too started. Only once before had he addressed her thus familiarly,

which was during that memorable afternoon beside the artificial lake at

Cuernavaca. Here, therefore, must lie the association that caused her

agitation. Yet, since that afternoon, she had permitted no reference to

their interview, unless to raise her brows quizzically at his continued

presence in Mexico. But now, what of the self-betrayal into which he had

just surprised her? It could not but be connected with that other time

when he had murmured her name. There was, however, no conscious vanity

in the remarkable explanation. It was remorse. He thought of Charlotte,

his wife. And this other woman, had he wronged her also? For during the

past weeks of trouble he had forgotten that he had loved her, and she

had not forgotten. In two such facts, falling together, was the wrong,

and one that a woman scarcely ever forgives, as he had had reason to

know.

"I could not help supposing, mademoiselle," he ventured diffidently,

"that what you said at Cuernavaca was inspired by--by no feeling toward

myself. I could suppose nothing else in the light of your utter

indifference since then, and--and your aversion for my very presence."

Jacqueline laughed pleasantly. "In that Your Highness deceives himself.

I did then, as I do now, feel for Your Highness enough to wish him

safely out of Mexico."

"Charity, then?"

She did not protest.

"As I thought," he said. "There was no feeling in--in----"

Jacqueline raised her eyes and met his frankly.

"When a woman feels in the sense you mean, sire," she said, "then she

does not make an empire, even the Austrian Empire, a condition. If the

man in question has no more than his horse, his pistols, even his pipe,

then the woman----" But she stopped abruptly.

"With you," he granted honestly, "it was not a matter of personal

ambition either. But if neither of these, then what--_Now_ I see!"

he cried. "A state reason! A decoy, to tempt me out of Mexico! Yes, yes,

now I see!"

"It is good to know," said Jacqueline, not ungratefully, "that Your

Majesty at least, if no other, can see a high motive in my self

abasement."

"Now what can she mean by that?" he demanded of himself. "What other, in

particular, thinks hard of her that she should care?"

Eloin was the only other man who could have seen them, there at

Cuernavaca. No, little it mattered to her what Eloin thought. But--yes,

there was another. There was the American who had intruded and wanted to

save his empire. Maximilian recalled now her change to bitterness after

the American had left them, and a moment ago he had seen the identical

pain of self-contempt tug at her lips. And yet, once she had left the

American to die. But Maximilian answered even that objection. Leaving

him to die was a necessity for her country. And the sacrifice had gone

farther. It had not faltered before the self-degradation of which she

had just spoken.

The admiration in his eyes grew. The chivalry in his race awoke within

him, and exalted him. He felt himself become the true knight, in the

purity of devotion to a woman--a gentleman, as real chivalry would have

the term. Poor man and poet, he felt even the impulse to bend the knee

and crave as a boon some risk of life in her service, without thought of

boon thereafter--a knightly impulse nearly obsolete in chivalry, if ever

customary. But he knew now that the impulse was really possible, and the

proof was this: that the constraint between them had vanished, that soon

he was talking with her easily and naturally.

For Jacqueline also the air had become blessedly pure, and deeply,

gratefully, she breathed of it. Because now she talked with one whose

respect was a fact, who _knew_ her for what she was, and during a

moment's space she was happy, with the happiness of delusion. It seemed

that other men, that one other man, might one day know her too, and give

her his esteem. But the phantasy passed. The knowledge must forever be

restricted to the man before her, and for him she did not care.

Maximilian, very strangely, was thinking of the very self-same thing.

Here was a service in her behalf already offering. If he could cause

that other man to know? But it was out of the question. Men may convince

one another of a woman's guilt, and only too easily. But of her

innocence? No, it was absurdly out of the question. Besides, next day

the true knight would be starting back for Europe. Had he not just

decided?

CHAPTER IX

INTERPRETER TO THE ALMIGHTY

"... and could make the worse appear

The better reason."--_Paradise Lost._

After half an hour's sharp canter, Maximilian dismounted at La Teja, his

suburban hacienda. He had come quickly from Jacqueline's, for his heart

was light. The stress and storm of wavering were ended at last. Soon now

he would be at Miramar, at beautiful Miramar, overlooking the sea, where

Charlotte awaited him, but knew it not. And by love and tender care he

would coax her back to sanity. Ah, no, the pure joy of living was not

done for them yet!

"Desire Father Augustin to attend me in my private cabinet," he said to

the first lackey.

The huge priest came on the instant. He bore a candle in one fat,

freckled hand, and above its light the dull flesh of his face shone

yellow. His head was as ever pear-shaped with its heavy, flabby jowls,

and in the apex the two little beads of eyes leaped adventurously at

sight of the prince.

"I am here, sire," he said purringly. "Your Majesty, then, wishes me to

prepare for his return to the imperial palace to-morrow?"

"No, father," His Majesty answered stoutly, though not without an uneasy

glance. "To-morrow I set out for the coast. The _Dandolo_ is still

there at anchor. You will give the necessary orders to my Hungarians,

who will be my escort."

Fischer opened his lips, to close them. The involuntary creasing of his

brow smoothed at once. Maximilian, who had dreaded argument from this

man, breathed easier. But of course any man would give way when a

Hapsburg had irrevocably made up his mind. The padre laid down the

candle, and interlaced his bloated fingers over his paunch in an

attitude of sleek calmness. He was smiling and fawned meek anxiety to

second his patron's least wish.

"Your Imperial Majesty's wisdom, I see, is not a thing to be turned by

the fraeulein?"

"On the contrary, Mademoiselle la Marquise d'Aumerle counseled my

departure, not my remaining."

The fingers tightened slightly over the bulge of the sutane. "She then

presumed to differ from Her Serene Highness, Your Majesty's mother?"

"My mother would counsel the same, were she in Mexico. I thank you,

padre, that I went to see the only one who could so take my mother's

place, because now, at last, I know what I must do."

The priest took a long breath, and drew back, mentally, to some vantage

point whence he could survey the field and plan his campaign anew. He

nodded humble acquiescence, but the small bright eyes seemed to gorge

themselves on the prince. Maximilian stirred restively. One has seen a

lion watch the trainer's whip, as though he wondered that a creature

with only a whip should yet, in some way, compel him to do this or that.

Before an obscure adventurer the monarch hastened to justify his

abdication. But it did not make him easier because the padre listened so

obsequiously, with never a quiver before the horror and misery pictured.

He only listened, this man of God, noting it all deferentially, item by

item, with a smiling gesture that he heard and understood, and was quite

ready for the next. Maximilian became aware at last of his own low

stooping. And that moment he stopped abruptly.

"The Lord reward Your Majesty's tender heart," now spoke the priest,

"and may the reward be such as a ruler should expect from his God!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Maximilian in impatient anger. "Have all

the barbarities of civil war no power to move you? Do I not know that

the savagery has already begun?"

The curate crossed himself. In humility he would bear the charge of

hardness of heart. "Power to stir me?" he repeated. "If Your Majesty

would think on his power to bring this same savagery to an end! That is

his reward offered by Heaven, the reward of bringing holy peace to a

stricken land."

"Did I not come for that? You only remind me how I have failed."

"And why, sire? Because your instruments were not blessed. The French

oppressed the Church as well as the people. But now the French are

leaving. It is the hand of Providence."

"She _said_ he would interpret the will of Heaven!" Maximilian

exclaimed.

The priest heard, stammered, and went to wreck miserably, as a hypocrite

unmasked knows that his next word must sound like hypocrisy. How slyly

she had checkmated him! Forseeing his thrust, she had countered his

every shift of cunning through this feeble fencer before him. And the

mistake he had made, in sending Maximilian to her! For a moment the

expression of the apostate Lutheran was very ugly in its baffled rage.

But he was too wise a trainer to lose patience utterly. He realized

instead that the struggle was harder than any he had yet had with his

royal dupe, since now his real antagonist was the young Frenchwoman.

"I? I interpret the word of God?" He said it very humbly, with bowed

head. "Alas, Your Majesty knows I am the last to presume to that. But

there are those who can. There is the Holy Father in Rome, who is

infallible. I only know that _he_ told Your Majesty's servant,

myself, that a ruler blessed by the Church is an instrument of God. But

if the ruler turns his back ere his work is done----"

Maximilian's nostrils were dilating strangely, and the consummate

tempter hurried on. He exalted the grandeur of the Emperor's task, yet

craftily made success appear simple and easy. The forces of "the

arch-rebel Benito Juarez" were concentrated in "a horde of impious

thieves calling themselves the Army of the North." But Miramon, His

Majesty's own general, was hastening to meet them. One decisive battle,

and there would be no more rebels. The nation must then recognize that

the Empire had sustained itself without French aid.

"Of course a few lives will be lost," he quietly sneered, "and we who do

not understand may grieve for them, but the ways of Heaven, for its own

ends, are inscrutable. Your Majesty knows that others before him, his

ancestors, have had to wade through the blood of God's enemies. But Your

Majesty's glorious ancestors were fulfilling their destiny. And why

should not you, also, sire, you who are the child of destiny?"

It was a magic word. Fischer knew his man devilishly well.

"But how can I tell," Maximilian demanded petulantly, "that my destiny

really lies in Mexico?"

"Then your destiny, sire, must lie in Europe, in Austria," was the

priest's astounding concession. "After all, a prince's intuitions, being

given him by divine revelation, can alone be his guide."

Maximilian's eyes flashed.

"Then I abdicate--herewith!"

Fischer meekly assented.

"There are rumors, nay, more than rumors," he mused aloud, "that a

strong hand is needed in Austria. I repeat only what all Europe says

boldly, that Franz Josef cannot long hold his throne. Yes, yes, sire,

but do not stare so!--Yet the crown prince is a child. Who then shall be

regent? Who but----"

"Enough, enough, I say! Now look to my orders. We start to-morrow."

The secretary beamed unctious joy that his master had so decided, and

was bowing himself out, when abruptly he paused, "Oh, I forgot, a packet

for Your Majesty."

Maximilian took the missive. It was not heavy. It did not seem as heavy

as Fate, not as heavy as a coffin.

"This is an old date," he said in a puzzled way. "See, the postmark,

'Brussels, Sept. 17.'"

"It just came by courier from Vera Cruz, being sent via New York no

doubt accounts for the delay."

Maximilian sighed. Even the post no longer considered royalty. Packets

had taken on leisurely habits since the Empire's crumbling--or since the

secretary's ascendancy. He broke the seal with tremulous fingers. The

thing must tell him of Charlotte.

"From Monsieur Eloin," he said.

"But he--he does not send bad news, nothing, sire, of Her Imperial

Highness?"

Well enough did that soul of mud know the letter's contents. Well enough

he knew that Eloin and himself could waste no time on an insane woman.

Their chances of future position were in too critical a state. And the

packet was designed for just such a crisis as the present.

Maximilian frowned, read excitedly. He was swept along as by a torrent.

Fixed on him were the small bead eyes of the priest, darting a light,

like a flame on oil. And when the Emperor gasped quickly and sprang to

his feet with hands clenched in the manner of a strong man, the priest

was ready.

"Good news, then?" he cried. "What fortune! Now Your Majesty will hurry

the faster to Vienna?"

Maximilian gave him a glance, as though he were dense to think so.

"Here, read, read it!"

M. Eloin, sycophant, courtier, had never sung for his royal patron a

roundelay more pleasing than his prose of the moment. It caused to

vibrate the very heart chords of the susceptible prince. There were

subtle appeals to spite ungratified, to wounded pride, to ambition, to

honor. The letter ran:

... Nevertheless, I am convinced that to abandon the throne now,

before the return of the French army, would be interpreted as an

act of weakness.... If this appeal (to the Mexican people) is not

heard, then Your Majesty, having accomplished his noble mission to

the end, will return to Europe with all the prestige that

accompanied his departure; and mid important events that are

certain to happen, he will be able to play the role that belongs

to him in every way....

And then the supreme refrain:

In passing through Austria, I was able to bear witness to the

general discontent that reigns there. Yet nothing is done yet. The

Emperor is discouraged; the people fret and publicly demand his

abdication; the sympathies for Your Majesty are spreading visibly

throughout the entire Empire; in Venetia a whole population wishes

to acclaim its former governor....

Thus it was that Eloin pilfered Jacqueline's lever, and thus he used

another fulcrum, as he had promised Charlotte he would. By pandering to

Maximilian's Austrian ambitions, he showed the weak prince how they

could yet never be realized if prestige were lost in Mexico. To keep

this prestige, to increase it, Maximilian must prove to Austria that he

could hold the empire he already had, and that without foreign bayonets.

He had only to stay a short time after the French should evacuate. And

then, within a few months, a few weeks, he might lay down the sceptre

voluntarily, to take up the one awaiting him across the ocean.

"We will leave here in the morning," cried Maximilian--"no, to-night, at

once!"

"For Vera Cruz, sire?" queried the padre.

"No, for my capital, for my palace! And father, allow no one to mention

abdication to me again. My decision to stay is irrevocable."

The padre promised faithfully that he should not be disturbed, and this

was one promise that the good padre kept.

CHAPTER X

ALONE AMONG HIS LOVING SUBJECTS

"And Jove himself shall guard a monarch's right."

--_The Iliad_.

Early one morning a month later, a solemn little group of uniformed men

climbed to the roof of Buena Vista, the imperial wedding gift to Marshal

Bazaine, and nerving themselves, pulled down the Tricolor. France, a

Napoleon, were again leaving the New World. It was Evacuation.

The Army of the Expedition came tramping down the Paseo. There were

heavy Dragoons and Cuirassiers, on majestic chargers. There were light

Chasseurs and Lancers, on fleet Arabians that had often proved

themselves against the Mexican pony. There was the clanking of steel,

and the flash of helmets through the dust. The imperial eagles, gilded

anew, were poised for flight back to their native aeries. Lower in the

earthly cloud bobbed the tasseled fez of the bronzed Zouave, and the

perky red pompon on the fighting cap of the little piou-piou. With the

steady beat of the march, the pantalons rouges crossed, spread, crossed,

spread, like regiments of bright, bloody shears. The bands played. And

yet it was not a martial scene. Feet, not hearts, lifted to the fife's

thrilling note. Nor was the multitude that thronged the wide avenue a

fiesta populace. It looked on stolidly, without a huzza, yet without a

hiss. Enthusiasm in either sense would have been relief, but the

Mexicans assisting at the bag and baggage of an invader were as unmoved

as those other spectators, the colossal figures in the glorietas; as the

two Aztec giants, leaning on their war clubs; as Guatemotzin, with high

feathered crest and spear aloft, foreboding as in life to the European

conqueror; as Columbus, who, having himself suffered, gave now no sign

of remorse for the blows which this new hemisphere gave the old; as

Charles IV. on his iron horse, who had bargained with a former Napoleon

to be called Emperor of America, and who, unlike Maximilian, had wisely

surrendered such a crown.

Cavalry, infantry, cannon, wagons, on they came through the city and

past the Zocalo, under the Cathedral towers, under the lifeless,

shuttered windows of the Palacio. Here in the Zocalo, in the central

plaza, the sometime first lady of Her Imperial Majesty's household sat

in her barouche, and opposite her a pretty girl, and she was talking

with an officer of Chasseurs d'Afrique whose horse was restive, and all

the while there was the rumbling of wheels, the tread of feet, and the

ring of hoofs.

The sometime first lady was saying good-bye to the officer, as she had

already to many another gallant chevalier pausing beside her carriage.

But for her it was farewell to all her countrymen there, to the little

piou-pious most of all, and her gray eyes were frankly moist.

"And now they are going," she mused aloud, "really going, because,

parbleau, a monsieur in Washington says they must."

"I wish to heaven," swore the young officer gloomily, "some monsieur

would say as much to you! See here, we'd give you and Mademoiselle

Berthe enough room on the ship for a barracks, if you'd only come.

There's a many less welcome," and he jerked his head toward a stream of

vehicles straggling among the troops. They were filled with Mexican

aristocrats whose doubtful titles had been revived by the Empire, all

eagerly accepting French transport out of their native land.

Jacqueline laughed. "They're so afraid of the Liberals, they will forget

their escutcheons. So of course they've forgotten the bouquets. You

should have seen the garlands, Michel, that heralded our grand entry

here. Oh, la-la! We paid for them ourselves. Thus arrived the Drapeau

Civilizateur de la France. And now behold the departure. Not the cost of

a violet to spare from Napoleon's strong chest! He mais, hear that tune!

It's 'Leaving for Syria,' the thing decreed into our national hymn. For

once I'm glad, glad it's not the 'Marseillaise.'"

"Mademoiselle--dear friend," spoke the slow-thinking Michel, "you do not

wish to answer my question. Why do you stay behind, alone? Why? Nothing

good ever happens to anyone in this country, and who can tell what might

happen to you when the army is gone? Come now," he went on, forcing some

bluff cheer into his words, "Jeanne d'Aumerle, your friends want you out

of it. Fall in with us, here, now. Let me give the order, 'Cocher, a

Paris!--Voila, what more's to be done?"

Indeed, what more simple? Or more to be desired? Yet there was nothing

she desired less. She thought of what she had found in Mexico, and must

leave behind. It was a dead thing, true, and already buried. But--the

grave was too fresh as yet. However, the real reason for her staying

involved something else.

She made no reply, for at the moment a strange voice, with a jagged

Mexican accent and a thin insidious inflection, broke in upon them, and

startled them all three.

"Nay, Monsieur le Duc," it began, rolling the title as a morsel on the

tongue. "Your Grace would deprive us of too much honor. Why, indeed,

should mademoiselle not remain among us?"

Turning quickly, Jacqueline beheld the stranger's black eyes upon

herself. He, too, wished to know why she stayed in Mexico, but in his

sharp, shifting look there was a penetration quite different from that

of the guileless Michel. He bestrode a magnificent horse that seemed

made for armor, whereas he himself would surely have been crushed under

so much as a Crusader's buckler. Being so very small, and perched so

very high, he cut a ludicrously martial figure with his plumed hat and

epaulettes and gold buttons and braid and medals and exquisitely mounted

sabre. It was not a French uniform that he wore, but Mexican Imperial,

and stupendously ornate. And within the brave array, he was such a

little, little man!--insignificance glorified into caricature.

But the pigmy was not altogether on parade. He had that morning been

receiving arsenals and fortresses from the French; in short, the keys of

the Empire. For he was Commander in Chief of the Imperial armies, was

this species of manikin. And ugly? He was a man of lifted upper lip

under a bristling moustache, a man of fangs, a wee, snarling, strutting,

odious creature of a man. A deep livid scar split his cheek and would

not heal. Instead of arousing sympathy, it proclaimed him rather for the

scratches he gave to others. For he was that Mexican of infamous name,

the Leopard. Once he had looted the British Legation. Another time he

massacred young medical students attending the wounded of both sides.

There were stories of children speared and tossed in ditches. Yet

certain priests blessed his ardor as defender of the Church. Maximilian

had sent him on a mission to Palestine, since he was abhorrent to the

moderates. But now he was back again, to lead the clerical armies. The

valley of Mexico shrank from his brutal proclamation demanding

submission. "Mexicans, you know me!" so ended the snarl. He gathered

forced loans. He drafted peons, though they were exempt. He emptied the

prisons, and convicts he sent in chains as recruits for the Imperial

garrisons. In such a fashion Leonardo Marquez began his duties as

generalisimo of the Empire.

"Your Excellency is most kind," said Jacqueline, for no other reason

than to annoy him by changing from French into his own language.

"On the contrary," returned Marquez, "I am flattered that you will be

here to observe how we, alone, shall crush the rebels. Your countrymen,

senorita, happily leave plenty of them. But I cannot believe that this

is why you remain."

"Make her tell you, then," interposed the helpless Ney. He was utterly

at sea. There was a trial of strength on between these two, but how or

for what was quite beyond him.

Jacqueline pushed back the Persian shawl she wore--this fifth day of

February was the Mexican springtime--and settled herself to the contest

in earnest. "I fear," she began slowly, "that my motive in staying can

hardly be intelligible, unless, perhaps, Your Excellency knows why I

came to Mexico in the first place. No senor, that blank smile of yours

will not serve. Your Excellency cannot feign ignorance of public

gossip."

"Of course, I have heard that----"

"To be sure you have," she returned dryly, "and you might add that I

failed, since Maximilian has not yet abdicated. But Your Excellency is

not one to imagine that the end can be long delayed."

She, too, was searching for a motive, his motive in the interview.

"The Mexicans alone will sustain our patriotic ruler," stoutly declared

the generalisimo. "But let us suppose, merely for pastime, that His

Majesty does abdicate. What then? What profit to France, since at this

moment, before our eyes, her army is leaving?"

Jacqueline smoothed the ruffled pleats on her full gray skirt. They

looked like an exaggerated railroad on a map, and doubtless needed

smoothing.

"And remotely supposing," she said, "that our army _might_ come

back again?"

Then, in a flash, she raised her eyes, and surprised the start he gave.

But she laughed at once, and at him, for taking her nonsense as serious.

"No," she exclaimed, "Your Excellency can more easily recall Santa Anna

from his island exile."

This, too, was nonsense, or so he was forced to consider it. But knowing

that the Empire could not endure, he was believed even then to be

negotiating with the rich former dictator. In his scowl Jacqueline

discovered what she sought. He wanted, in brief, to negotiate with

Napoleon also, and he wanted to negotiate through her. Napoleon could

bid higher than Santa Anna. She saw, moreover, what was worrying the

traitor. If Napoleon did not mean to bid, why then was she staying in

Mexico?

Marquez glanced fretfully at Ney and Berthe. If he might be honored in

the privilege of calling to pay his respects?----

But Jacqueline regretted that she was to be too much occupied in

preparations for her own early departure. And that very evening she sent

a note to Maximilian, frankly warning him against the Leopard. But she

warned His Majesty farther, that if he did not heed, that when it should

be too late to save him in any case, and Marquez still had something to

sell, that then she would advise her own emperor, should her own emperor

wish to buy. Hoping, though, for the best, she sent by Ney a message to

Bazaine at the head of the column, suggesting that he delay embarkation

as long as possible. She had in mind Maximilian awakened to the

faithlessness of his chief support and wishing to overtake the French

troops.

For which it appears that Jacqueline still wielded a free lance,

belonging to her own country alone and owning no master other than her

own conscience.

As Bazaine at the army's head rode through the Zocalo, he looked up to

find the palatial shutters closed. The Mexican Empire was sulking like a

spiteful child. The marshal wearily shrugged his shoulders, and thought

on the ingratitude of princes. But the silence of the Palace was only a

pose, mean and despicable. Maximilian himself was peeping through the

shutters down upon the gallant, moving sea of color. It was a stream of

gleaming bayonets, of champing horses, of lumbering artillery. His eyes

would single out and cling to this or that figure till it was lost in

the street beyond, and then he would try to realize that it was lost to

him forever. For the street beyond lay toward the coast, where many

ships awaited. The archducal petulance gave way to vague melancholy.

Finally he looked upon the last swinging foot, then at the dust

settling. Below, in the Zocalo, what had been a fringe of mourning

around the troops, became a scurrying of human creatures. They were his

subjects. Not a French uniform remained, but the prince sighed heavily

as he turned from his ignoble peep-hole. Courtiers and counselors

glanced at each other significantly. By tacit consent one among them

spoke.

"Free at last, sire, free at last! Ah, see them, there below. They know

their shackles are broken, they know that the foreign invader who

chilled their allegiance is gone. Nay more, their loyalty has already

borne fruit. In the north, sire----"

"How, father? You do not mean----"

"Yes, sire, yes, the mother of God be praised! I mean victory, and death

to many traitors. The news has just come. Miramon has won a decisive

battle and taken Zacatecas."

"Zacatecas! But Juarez was there?"

"Yes, sire, and Miramon entered so suddenly the arch rebel surely could

not have escaped."

"Juarez taken, that man taken!"

"Even so, sire, And"--Fischer's interlaced fingers tightened until the

veins grew large--"and, it only remains for Your Majesty to dispose of

him, according to the law."

Maximilian trembled with joy. He was master of the situation. His people

had made him master. Here was divine right vindicated. It was--Destiny!

He had but to follow whither the heavenly finger pointed. And in

rapture, he seized his pen.

Palace of Mexico, Feb. 5th, 1867.

My dear General Miramon:

I charge you particularly, in case you do capture Don Benito

Juarez, Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejado, and others of his suite,

to have them tried and condemned by a council of war ... but

the sentence is not to be executed before receiving Our

approbation....

Your affectionate

Maximiliano.

Bazaine and the French camped the first night, the next day, and yet

another night outside the City, waiting. They did not reach Puebla until

the tenth. The rear guard fell farther and farther behind, keeping the

road open. At last there was news. Juarez had escaped Miramon at

Zacatecas, warned in time through some mysterious agency. And farther,

Miramon had encountered another Republican army, by whom he was not only

defeated, but routed completely. In panic he was fleeing to Queretero.

"Maximilian must surely abdicate now," thought Bazaine, and he sent back

a message. "I can," he wrote, "yet extend a hand to His Majesty to help

him retire."

In Vera Cruz the marshal waited for an answer. Day after day passed, and

then the answer came. Too late, was its refrain. Maximilian had left his

capital with what troops he could spare. He had left for Queretero, to

join Miramon there.

Bazaine, the last to quit the shore, climbed aboard his ship, and taking

one final look for a chance horseman with word to wait yet longer, and

seeing none, gave the order to weigh anchor.

CHAPTER XI

FATALITY AND THE MISSOURIAN

"Si debbe ai colpi della sua fortuna

Voltar il viso di lagrime asciutto."

--_Machiavelli._

The mountain villages were arming. Bronzed men, savagely joyful, poured

from under roofs of thatch, strapping on great black lead-weighted

belts. In the corrals others lassoed horses. It looked like a sudden

changing from peaceful highland domesticity, as the clans of Scotland or

the cantons of Helvetia might gather. But these men were not rising to

defend their homes. The hamlets clustered among the crags were their

barracks, nothing more. The wildest canyons of the Sierra Madre del Sur,

far away in the rocky southwestern corner of the continent, were only

their camping grounds, their refuge. To be armed was their natural

state. They were fighters by occupation. They were an army. Unceasing

hardship and constant peril had seasoned them, and their discipline was

perfect, unconscious, because it came from the herding instinct of

wolves. During years they had waged war against a ruthless foe, and

they, too, were relentless. The penalty of defeat was massacre.

The foe of this army was a greater army, and between the two it was a

duel of chieftains, of General Regules in the Sierra, of General Mendez

on the plain. Deadlier antagonists might not be imagined. Mendez, he who

had shot two Republican generals under the Black Decree, was above all

men the likeliest to hold stubborn Michoacan for the Empire. But even he

failed, because the man against him was not less a man than he, because

also the spark of resistance to sceptre and crosier never dies out in

Michoacan.

The man as good as he was Regules. A Spaniard, Regules had fought with

the Catholic Don Carlos. And now, he was suffering for Mexican Liberals

the most that any general can suffer, defeat after defeat, and sometimes

annihilation. But he was a Marion, a Fabius. He knew the mountain

recesses as no one else, even better than Mendez, who was born among

them, and here he would gather fugitives, draft every straggler, until

in time he sallied forth again to badger his arch enemy. He hoped only

to exist till that day when the French should leave Empire and Republic

face to face, on equal terms. It had taken tenacious faith and gloomy

years, but the day came at last. The news sifted through defile and

gorge. The invader had embarked for Toulon. Nearer at hand Mendez had

evacuated Morelia, and was marching to Queretero. And at Queretero was

Miramon, driven there from the north by Escobedo. At Queretero was the

Emperor--was the Empire, desperate, ferocious, an animal at bay. Out

boldly upon the plain, then! But no longer as a slinking guerrilla

horde! As an army rather, with thrilling bugles and the Mexican eagle

aloft, and regiment numbers in gold on pennons of brightest red! For the

Empire was the hunted mad-dog now, and the dignified host was the

Republic. The barracks of the Sierra were arming.

In one of the corrals an officer of cavalry was quelling insubordination

with soft words. But the mutineers, not knowing their man, did not

fathom the dangerous sweetness of his tone. They were deserters from

Mendez, come that morning, and as they had horses, were foisted on the

officer's splendid troop. But like the native infantry, they insisted

that their women, the soldaderas, should go with them on what was to be

a swift march to Queretero. Having brought useful information concerning

Mendez, they were insolent in their demands.

"Now, muchachos," said the officer of cavalry, "you see how absurd it

is, so quiet down. The women can follow later."

"A Gringo to dictate to us, bless me the saints! Us, free Mexicans, and

Republicans!" And the ringleader drew his machete and rushed on the

officer.

The Gringo smiled, in a way that a man rarely smiles. His eyes opened in

mild surprise, and as the mutineers looked to see his head roll from his

shoulders, he was still smiling in that poisonously sweet way. Perhaps

there passed across his face just the shadow of pity or of revulsion,

but none might say for certain, because of a pistol's flash that came so

quickly after. With the report the assailant plunged headlong, and on

the ground seemed to shrivel in his rags. Behind the smoke the officer

was carelessly holding a large black revolver, no higher than his hip.

"Because," he added, "it's not a woman's game."

Then he thrust the weapon back under his ribs and sauntered away. The

mutineers gaped in trembling at his back. When they picked up the

ringleader, they saw that his fingers had been neatly clipped at the

hilt of the machete.

The cavalry officer was Driscoll--but changed! He was changed as bland

Mephisto would change a man, if the material were adaptable and Mephisto

an artist. Such exquisite gentleness in peril and in slaying could be no

other than the devil's own, and in the most devilishly artistic mood of

that suave dilettante.

It was natural that any man should color somewhat into a desperado,

considering such an existence among those Sierras, but Driscoll was a

desperado refined by cynicism. And yet there was still naught of

self-consciousness in it all. The change had not been abrupt, but

gradual, as a growing into maturity. The roughened native instincts of a

gentleman had sobered from Quixotic impulses into a diabolic calm. His

bravery was turned to cool and almost supernatural self possession,

mocked withal by gentleness. And yet he was not a villain. To the

mutineers, to those who beheld his smile, he seemed a fiend. But his

horse knew no change in him, which was significant. Something had gone

wrong, that was all. The young man who had looked out on the world, half

challenging, half expectant, must have seen too suddenly that part of

life which is unlovely. However, the thing may not be thus easily

explained. The soul of a man, when bent or distorted under stress, is a

weird and fearful growth. One may contemplate it in awe; but understand

it, never.

More than a year before, when Driscoll changed sides, he was embarrassed

to find a side to change to, so thoroughly had the Empire swept away all

vestiges of the Liberal strength. But on achieving that farewell of his

to Mendez, he rode happily southward, with some vague notion of tracking

the Republic into Michoacan. The first night he slept under the stars

mid tunas and Spanish daggers, and when he awoke it was to find a

strange Indito squatting patiently at his feet. He sat up and rubbed his

eyes at what might have been a Hindoo image, except that it doffed a

straw sombrero.

"Y'r Mercy is awake?" queried the idol.

"N-o, but it will probably not be long now. Who in thunder are you?"

The Indito explained, and Driscoll covered his knees with his hands, and

stared and grew more astounded. The ragged fellow said that he had

escaped from Mendez's camp by squirming on his belly through the cacti,

and he had followed the American senor, on foot. He was, he added, a

Republican spy.

Driscoll mechanically drew his pistol, but recalled that now he also was

Republican.

"But why follow me?" he demanded.

"I was sent to watch only Y'r Mercy, Y'r Mercy's thousand pardons."

"The devil!"

"And with Y'r Mercy's permission, I was to kill Y'r Mercy at the first

chance. But since Y'r Mercy has changed sides----"

"Now look here, who--who put you up to this business, I want to know?"

The man shrugged his shoulders. He only knew that a senor chaparro had

sent him.

"A short senor?" Driscoll repeated. "Then we might call you a Shorter

Yet, and maybe you know where this Republica is hiding out?"

The Indito brightened. "That's why I'm here, senor. I'll take Y'r Mercy

to the Citizen General Regules."

At the name Driscoll frowned involuntarily, but laughed as he again

remembered that he no longer shared the Imperialist hates.

"Regules?" he repeated. "But we all thought he was dead, since the last

time we scoured his mountains."

"That the Virgin would have let me kill Y'r Mercy before then!" said the

Indito regretfully. "But no matter, Y'r Mercy will discover that the

citizen general is still alive."

And so he was. They found him in the wildest of the wild region of the

Sierra Madre del Sur, far away beyond the Rio de las Balsas, beyond

Michoacan, in the impassable tierra caliente of the Pacific slope. The

Indians here were the Pintos, who knew naught of the world outside, and

owned allegiance to none but a grizzly old dictator, royally described

as the Panther of the South. One thing was certain, the Empire could

never follow Regules to the fever and ambush of the Panther's marshy

realm, and Regules was hard pressed indeed when he sought such

protection. But he was there now, in that last refuge of Liberalism,

alone, wounded, fever stricken, emaciated, but undaunted. Driscoll found

him so, and became his first recruit.

For the moment Regules had no army, but armies were only weapons

brandished by the real principals in the duel. Over battle and rout and

slaughter the two chiefs would glare each at the other, blade in hand

and panting, but either ever ready for the stroke that should thrust

through the army to the heart of its general. Such a struggle needed

only antiquity and a bard to be Homeric. No Greek could equal either

champion in cunning, nor Trojan in prowess, nor both in grim persistence

and rugged hate. It was truly a fight to have a hand in, and with big,

lusty zest, the Storm Centre bounded into the lists. He leaped backward

into the age of colossal, naked emotions, which strove as great veined

giants with a rude splendor that was barbaric. It was the grandeur of

primeval man, of majesty resting on him who fought best. After a

thousand years of roof and tableware a man may be no longer primeval,

but he is no longer quite a man either if his primeval state does not

sometimes appeal to him. As for the young Missourian, he was enthralled.

During that winter, the Spaniard and the American were a recruiting

squad of two, picking up the seeds of rebellion among the fertile rocks.

The vago, or poor Indito, was drafted wherever caught. Guerrilla

fugitives rejoined their leader. The little band grew slowly, but in

appearance merited Mendez's contemptuous epithet of brigand thieves.

Fluttering yellow rags revealed only leathery-hided bones. Sandals

sloughed away. There were a few machetes, and one or two venerable

musketoons. But the commoner weapon was a heavy wooden staff, used for

trudging up the steep paths. Imagine a Mexican abandoning his horse! But

pursuers often tracked "the brigand thieves" by their mounts dying here

and there--a pitiful blazed trail. And their exhausted riders often lay

down as well, and would not rise, though Regules lashed them, though the

terrible Mendez followed close behind. If at this time the Republic

compared its conditions with the tapestried court in Mexico, then hope

of success must have seemed lugubrious irony. Yet there was the

watchword still, "Viva la Intervencion del Norte!" Regules looked to the

United States to drive away the French. Driscoll's face would twist to a

grimace. It was a peculiar position for an ex-Confederate.

The Republicans in Michoacan were cut off from all outside help, while

those along the Rio Grande drew from the friendly Americans in Texas

much aid and comfort. Driscoll pondered on this, until in June he got

leave to go to the Cordova colony and there enlist, if possible, his old

comrades of Shelby's brigade. The result is known. After the affair at

Tampico, he came back with a troop of colonels. They were the nucleus of

a cavalry which he loved more than Demijohn, more than his ugly pistols,

more than his pipe.

It was a grim affection that Driscoll bore his regiment of horse. He was

no longer the same man as when he left. He returned from Cordova with a

mood on him, which settled more and more heavily as he nursed his troops

into a splendid fighting machine. There was a dangerously quiet

exultation in the patience with which he built the regiment up to full

strength and trained it into the power of a brigade. He did wonders

through the idea, pleasantly instilled, that much of the fun of fighting

lies in the winning, and he demolished, as an absurd fetich, the idea

that the hunted men of Regules were doomed never to win.

Thus he labored with the Inditos, his terrible little fatalists in

combat. There were enough to choose from, since by now the tide of

desertion was changing toward the Republic. The problem of mounts in

time solved itself. The French began selling their horses rather than

transport them back to Europe, and these being declared contraband of

war by the Liberal government, were complacently taken away from their

owners without even Juarez script in payment. The question of arms

proved more troublesome, but the answer at last was even more

satisfactory. For the besieged at Queretero, Driscoll's troop later

became some unfamiliar dragon hissing an incessant flame of poisonous

breath. This was due to a strange and mystical weapon which not only

carried a ball farther than any rifle known before, but sixteen of them,

one after the other. The strange and mystical weapon multiplied a lone

man into a very genii of death, until the Missourian's twelve hundred

were more to be dreaded than many battalions.

The repeating rifles, it may be explained, formed a part of the cache

which General Shelby had made on crossing into Mexico. He had taken

them, among other things, from the Confederate depositories in Texas.

Driscoll knew of the cache through Boone, and by infinite patience had

it brought into Michoacan. A solitary Indito journeyed eight hundred

miles unnoticed with some seeming fragments of scrap iron. Other vagos

were in front of him. Others followed. And these passed yet others,

empty handed, trudging in the opposite direction. So an arsenal came to

the Sierra Madre del Sur all the way from the Rio Grande, and each and

every cavalier, whether miserable ranchero or veteran Missourian, became

an engine of destruction, good for a fusillade of forty shots without

the biting of a cartridge, for sixteen from his rifle, for six from each

of his revolvers, and after these, good for terrific in-fighting with

his dragoon sabre. It was no marvel that Driscoll loved such a troop,

but the wonder lay in his smile, soft and purring and far-away, as he

stroked his murderous darling.

Colonel Daniel Boone, chief of scouts, was harassed nearly to insomnia

over the change in his friend. At the bottom of the mystery there must

be inspiration for a glowing line, and with pen ready poised over the

violet fluid of romance, it was disheartening to have the solution elude

him. He proposed clues as a poet tests rhymes. There was vendetta. There

was blighted passion. But he ruefully discarded both. Either would be

marked by violent growth, while this thing that touched the Storm Centre

formed as slowly as the gravity of wisdom. But what baffled most was

that Driscoll himself was completely oblivious. If _he_ knew

nothing of the effect, how then could one ask him about the cause?

Daniel, however, overlooked the fact that a malady may break out

variously, according to temperament. As an instance Daniel's patient

would lose himself in reverie, long and deep and mellowing. Now he was

riding with a girl whose gray eyes were upon him in that pensive way she

had; or rather, in the pensive way of a girl who finds herself in love,

and wondering at it, seeks to learn the reason through a grave scrutiny

of the object. It seemed very good to be riding with her again like

that, for there was a soothing sense of companionship, of dear

camaraderie that needed no words, but only that expression of her mouth

and a pair of gray eyes. The day dream, while it lasted, had nothing of

bitterness, but lulled his soul instead, and when it passed, he would be

left with thankfulness for his moment of fleeting bliss and ineffable

comfort. Or again, he awoke to reality with a longing that fiercely

would not be denied. "Oh, I want--Jack'leen!" Often and often the

imperious smothered cry all but passed his lips. And then he would shake

himself, as out of physical slumber, and he would take up his life

again. But he would be a shade deeper in the devil's own mood, of

gentleness and a smile.

After Cuernavaca Driscoll had brooded somewhat, yet rather as a boy

whose melancholy is callow and easily fades. But during that evening in

Boone's cabin, he had changed to a man, for it was then he came to know

the meaning of possession, and in the same moment he learned the meaning

of loss. A dull and indefinable resentment thereafter grew on him. But

against whom? Against no one, perhaps. Yet he had had a vision of his

life's dearest happiness, and it was gone, that vision, beyond recall.

Ignorant as he was of Jacqueline's mission, Driscoll had but one

explanation. A man had been born a prince, and a prince dazzles a woman.

Yet the rankling in him was neither because of the prince, nor because

of the woman. It was much more hopeless than that. It was because a man

could be born a prince at all. Something was out of harmony in the

world. The irony of it made him grim, and to his sense of humor that

such things could be came the smile. A prince in the New World and in

the Nineteenth Century!--Now here was as incongruous a juxtaposition as

a bull in a crockery shop. And the result?--A people robbed of their

dignity as men; a spike among the cogs, and the machinery everywhere

grinding discordantly. For the pilfered people, however, the matter

could be righted, and Driscoll felt his vague wrath as one with theirs.

Together they would drive the bull from the shop. The Mexicans could

later repair _their_ crockery. But as to his own precious little

bit of bric-a-brac, that was shattered beyond hope. His only balm was to

help the other sufferers. His only resentment was against fatality. But

to pout at fatality is such a foolish business that he smiled, in a

gentlemanly, sardonic way. Lucifer himself would be obsequious before

fatality. And as for presuming to chastise it, that does indeed require

the devil's own mood.

CHAPTER XII

THE RENDEZVOUS OF THE REPUBLIC

"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.

Now they 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."

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 a Missouri 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 Republica

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 Regules exacted suffering of the

_mocho_, 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 Acambaro a

second Republican army, under General Corona--"welcomer than a stack of

blues," as Boone said--more than doubled their force, and together they

hastened on to Queretero.

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

Queretero, 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 Regules. The Republicans, therefore,

must be united at once.

The message was no sooner heard than the two weary brigades of Corona

and Regules 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. Regules'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, Maria purisima," cried Regules, "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, Senor 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 Regules. "Here, in

between us. Talk as we ride, or----"

Don Tiburcio complied. Such had been his intention.

"I am no more a loyal Imperialist," he announced, with a gruesome

contortion of the mouth.

"Nor a live deserter for long," said Regules. "Quick, what's the news at

Queretero?"

"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, senores. 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 Regules, "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, senores mios," and the scout's words grated in rage and

chagrin, "I curse His Excellency the general-of-division-in-chief of the

army of operations, Don Leonardo Marquez. I curse, senores, the Reverend

Senor 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. Queretero? Ha, Queretero was now the Court,

the Army, the Empire! Pious townsmen shouted "Viva el Senor Emperador!"

all day long. The cafes 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, senores."

Regules 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 Regules.

"Si senor, Marquez! Marquez cried out against the attack, and His

Majesty ordered the troops back into town again."

"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 Murguia's hacienda? Well, but trouble started when I saw

her, or rather, when she saw me, even me, senor, 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, Regules 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 beneficiary of 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 Regules. 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 Regules saved him, while Driscoll

lifted his shoulders indifferently and at heart was not sorry.

The Celaya road, crossing a flat country, first touches Queretero 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 Arabia

called paradise, a city of fountains, and wooded glens, like haunts of

mythical fauns. Queretero 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 Queretero 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 Regules,

and soon after, of General Riva Palacio. The Republicans 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

senor, 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. Queretero,

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. The very 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.

CHAPTER XIII

A BUCCANEER AND A BATTLE

"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 largely _chinacos_, 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 out of 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 between them 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 mass so 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 Galan, 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.

Their 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 senor," 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 Queretero! 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, senor, do not understand

the feelings of a man bowed under a heavy wrong. You----"

"We'll let it go at that," said Driscoll, with a little wave of the

hand, "but--how in----"

"You scoff already, senor? But will you, at these stains of blood? Then

let me say to you, senor 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, senor, he who shares my wrong, Don Anastasio Murguia."

"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, "was _his_ part of the bargain."

"Whose?"

"Anastasio Murguia's."

"Rod, you talk like a----"

"But no, senor, it's because you Americans cannot understand. Murguia

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.

The messenger said that the Marquesa d'Aumerle was leaving for

Queretero. If I captured her, it would be vengeance in kind. But Murguia

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 Fe 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 Queretero."

"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. "Senor, senor, 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. When Driscoll 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.

"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, _these_ girls 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.

"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 Queretero. 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.

CHAPTER XIV

BLOOD AND NOISE--WHAT ELSE?

"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, never had 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 Queretero. 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, striving 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, "they _are_ going 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.

Grays and brigands drew rein under the Cimatario's west slope, and the

bugle sounded to dismount.

"But senor," 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 the regiment. 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 awakened hell, 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 hell _don't_ ye 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.