But never before--for now around him there was the contrast of hate and

panting and passions in ferment--had Driscoll seemed so distant a thing

from flesh and the human sphere. In grime, in dust, in smoke, among

faces changing demoniac wrath for the sharp, self-wondering agony of

mortality, his face was cool, serene, with just the hint of a smile

tugging at his lips. His own men would try to look another way, try

uneasily to break the fascination of this strange warrior who led them.

The battle was short, but of the hottest. Its central point was the

little brass howitzer. Driscoll, Grinders, Bledsoe, the Doc, all four

pushed at the carriage or pulled at the trunnion rings, while around

them, hindering them, swaying back and forth over rocks and in the

ditches, the two forces battled for possession, hand to hand, with

six-shooters and clubbed muskets. Grinders fell, cursing angrily.

Bledsoe fell, toppling heavily his great length. The Doc fell. "By

the----" he began, but got no further. He was not mistaken this time.

But the gun was turned at last, and a vicious hand jerked the rope.

Powder grains pierced the eyes of the nearest Imperialists. The shot

tore through the mass of them. Yet Driscoll remembered most how wan, how

_hungry_, they looked.

"Death to the traitors! A muerte! A mu-erte!"

It was a heavy nasal, hurled from the lungs with that force and venom

peculiar to the Spanish tongue. It came from Don Rodrigo, who had pulled

the lanyard, and who now pulled it again and again, crazed first with

joy, then with rage because the emptied gun would not respond.

While the combatants were so confused together, the tiradores in the

upper trenches had to hold their fire, but when the defenders gave way

at last, those above could wait no longer. Four thousand and more, they

leaped their earthworks, and came charging down the slope on what was

left of Driscoll's six hundred.

Grays and brigands faced about, but most of all they looked beyond the

enemy's right flank, to the line of the hill's crest there. For just

beyond that jagged line and somewhere below Old Brothers and Sisters and

the eight other companies must be toiling up. But they would have to

appear in the interval of the Imperialists' downward rush. Driscoll

turned to his bugler. "Blow, Hanks! Blow like the _very_ devil!"

The blast sounded long and shrill, like a plaintive wail. The six

hundred pumped lead up the hill mechanically, but their hearts were

echoing the clarion's cry for help, and rather than on the foe sweeping

down over the rocks to crush them, their eyes were strained on the

sun-emblazoned line against the sky. But the parson was a man. At last,

just over the slope's crest, a head appeared, a cherubic head with

spectacles, and two arms waved for haste to others behind. And instantly

more heads bobbed up, and more yet, until the jagged line was fairly

encrusted with mouse-colored sombreros, like barnacles on a stranded

keel.

From where they were the new comers began their work, lying flat on

their stomachs. Once over the ridge, down each man fell and joined the

chorus of musketry. Their fusilade thickened to a blanket of flame,

closely woven. The host rushing down the slope forgot the tales that

were told of the marvelous sixteen-shot rifles. They thought instead

that an army of Republicans, and not a man less, were upon their flank.

For how else could volleys be so well sustained, how else so deadly? And

how fast they themselves were dropping! The thing was not like bullets,

but as the earth caving under them. The charge turned to panic. They

plunged on downward, indeed, and even sheer into the cross fire of

Driscoll's six-shooters and the one howitzer. But it was headlong

flight. At the trench they did not stop to grapple, but fought their way

through and fled on down the hill, on across the grassy plain, nor

paused until they had crowded pell-mell into the main Imperialist army

drawn up before the Alameda.

Maximilian and his resplendent staff were there at the Alameda. The

Emperor was perhaps less astounded than they.

"Ai, general, if you _had_ known how Tampico fell!" he said to

Miramon.

Yet neither was actually dismayed. The Cimatario and five thousand men

had succumbed to a thousand or fifteen hundred daredevils. It was hard

enough to believe, in all conscience. But the daredevils could be

dislodged, and they must be, at once. Miramon's orders rose sharply and

quick, and the Empire sprang to obey. The Alameda batteries were trained

on the hill, and a few moments later the guns on the roof of the La Cruz

monastery were also. At the same time, the army, the entire Imperialist

reserve, battalion after battalion in close, hurried ranks, set out

across the grassy plain, straight toward the Cimatario's front slope.

Foot, horse, artillery, the concentrated might of the Austrian's

sceptre, was being hurled against a handful of jaded warriors.

Maximilian flushed with something like shame at the thought.

Back on the slope Driscoll cried, "No, no, keep to the trenches, you

fellows! This ain't _our_ promenade."

And soon, when screaming comets began to fill the air and burst around

them, they were glad of the ditches. There they waited, smoking,

spitting tobacco against the torrid rocks, but with sullen eyes on the

army moving nearer and nearer. Where, all this morning, was Escobedo,

who, with his thousands of Republicans on the north of the town had

taken no thought of the Republican stress on the south? He had not fired

a shot. Yet surely he must know by this time. But no matter. Over a

hundred outlaws were left, and nearly a thousand Grays. Missourians,

brigands, and guerrillas of Michoacan, they were a dangerous blend.

"Got a match, Harry?" asked Driscoll of the Kansan, as he filled his cob

pipe.

They _had_ to wait, you see. Yet haste was all they would have

begged of the advancing Imperialist host.

The red jackets of the Dragoons--the few that were left--brightly dotted

the van of the attacking thousands. On either side rode the Second and

Fourth Lanciers. Behind tramped the battalions of Iturbide, of Celaya,

and regiments of the line. They gained the foot of the hill and the

cavalry were dismounting before they drew fire. The baptism had a

sharpshooter deadliness, even at that distance, but the Imperialists

waited tentatively. No, there was but one volley. When the second came,

it was only after an interval long enough for reloading. Officers and

men glanced at one another more hopefully. The terrified fugitives were

of course mistaken, they thought. For the force above could not be

large, nor yet possess the mysterious sixteen-shot rifles. The assurance

gave the buoyancy of relief. To charge against carbines that made each

man as sixteen were uncanny, too much like challenging the Unknown. But

a thousand men who fired only every two or three minutes--an antagonist

like that was quite well known to their philosophy. So breathing hard,

they valiantly marched up the hill. They suffered cruelly under the

scattered fusillades, yet were not materially resisted. At last they

were near enough, and the bugles sounded for the final rush.

Now what was odd, the Republicans stopped firing altogether. But they

were waiting for shorter range, and a moment later, at a hundred paces,

their reopening volley had all the clockwork dispatch of platoon drill.

Yet the Imperialists took the dose as a thing expected, and sprang over

their wounded to gain the trenches. They required only the lull of

reloading. But instantly a second volley prolonged the first. The column

staggered, and faces blanched. In a sudden despair they realized the

enemy's tactics, for the enemy did have those terrible rifles, after

all. From the trenches a low sheet of flame had spread, searing the

breasts of rank after rank that pressed against its edge. Scarlet-coated

Dragoons, the last of them, flecked the rocks, and over them fell green

uniformed troopers, as grass will cover a bloody field, and the

Municipal Guards, swaying up from behind, paid out a sprinkling of

blue--a ghastly pousse-cafe, as one grim jester described it afterward.

The long massed lines wavered.

"They've stopped, they've stopped!" cried Rodrigo. "Now we'll close with

them, eh, senor--por Dios, _now_!"

"All you fellows," shouted Driscoll, "just fill your rifles while they

wait. Stopped nothing, Rod! And anyhow, who'd hold the hill if we left

it? Who?"

The answer came at once, and in dramatic form. One of the pickets

stationed on the flank ran among them.

"There's another big slew of 'em a-coming!" he yelled excitedly.

"Yonder, over yonder!"

Driscoll rose and followed the man to the east slope. From there he

beheld an overpowering force, advancing diagonally across the llano

below. It came by the Carretas road, which skirted Queretaro on that

side, and it was hurrying toward the Cimatario. The colonel of Grays

watched them anxiously through his glasses.

"Shucks," he said at last, "the fight's over. It's Escobedo. He's sent

his reserve. Don't you see those black shakos, Jim, and those gray

coats? They're the Cazadores de Galeana, and the best yet. Now we'll

have someone to hold the hill!"

But getting back to the trenches, Driscoll saw that the help might not

come soon enough. For however the Imperialists squandered their lives,

they would yet overcrowd death. Some had already gained the first

trench, and were there engaged hand to hand, with sabre and pistol. In

the trenches above the Grays steadily fed the molten flame. But Driscoll

chose the in-fighting, and naturally became himself the centre of the

hottest patch.

"Help's here! in five minutes, just five minutes!" he spoke right and

left to his men, as a carpenter will converse and hammer at the same

time. For the outnumbered Grays it was the help arrived already.

The Imperialist cannon had of necessity ceased firing, so what should be

the consternation of the attacking column to have a shell fall among

them from the rear! All eyes turned, and a murmur of panic rose. It was

not that their own batteries had made a mistake, but that there had not

been any mistake. The reserve sent by Escobedo, hearing the battle, had

wheeled and rushed straight down the centre of the plain on the chance

of giving quicker assistance. Once in sight of the trenches, though

still considerably to the right of the hill, they had unlimbered a gun,

while cavalry and infantry pushed on to the rescue. Not to be caught

between trenches and plain, the Imperialists acted with soldiery

decision. Their clarions sounded retreat.

"Now it's _our_ turn!" shouted Driscoll, and with the parson and

the Kansan and the outlaw chief, and guerrillas and Missourians pouring

out of their ditches, he chased down hill the concentrated might of an

Empire. So closely was that chasing performed that pistol flashes burned

into standards and uniforms.

Maximilian and Miramon and the high officers of the realm were still at

their post of observation in front of the Alameda. For the third time

that morning they faced Imperial cohorts hurled back upon them by a man

named Driscoll. Miramon reproached himself bitterly. His plans to

intercept Escobedo's reserve on the north had failed. The Emperor's

pallid features were drawn with the tensity of a big loser. Yet in the

soft blue eyes there flashed a chivalrous wonder at an enemy's valiant

deed.

On the llano fugitives and pursuers mingled as one in the human wave of

confusion. Escobedo's cavalry had overtaken the melee, and blended with

the rear of the fleeing column, until it seemed likely that both must

enter the town together. But a charge of grape, fired obliquely from the

Alameda, mowed a path between them--a Spartan business, for it reaped

Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were

better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican

bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering

fire the little band of victors had to draw back to the Cimatario.

As Escobedo's reserve occupied the hill, Driscoll marched his own force

behind the same to get his horses there. But the mustangs of the

brigands had disappeared, and far to the southwest were the brigands

themselves, moving swiftly over the plain toward the mountains. They

hardly numbered two-score now, and at that distance seemed a few men

herding a drove of empty saddles. The late indignant patriot, Don

Rodrigo, had changed back to outlaw. As another Cid, he might have

looked for pardon from a grateful country, but possibly he feared the

Roman justice of Juarez too much to risk it. Besides, a man will not

lightly give up his career. That same night Rodrigo lay again among the

sierras, quite ready for the first bullion convoy or beautiful

marchioness passing by.

Shells and minie balls were yet dropping perfunctorily, and the llano

between hill and town was still a dangerous place enough, but scattered

here and there were a few of both sides looking for their wounded, and

often themselves going down before the aim of sharpshooters. Stiffening

bodies lay under the trampled grass in every varied horror of

mutilation, and glassy eyes peered unseeing upward through the stalks,

like the absurd and ghastly contrast of a horrible dream. But among them

were the stricken living in as varied an agony, of raw wounds stung by

gnats, of pain cutting deep to vitality, of thirst, of the broiling sun,

of a buzzing fly, or of an intolerable loneliness there with death.

Groans rose over the plain, and guided the searchers. Driscoll had

already found many of his men in this way. Once he heard his own name.

The voice was weak, but there was something vaguely familiar to it, and

involuntarily he held his pistol against treachery as he parted the

grass and revealed a wounded man at his feet. It was a piteously

famished body that raised itself a little by one hand. It was a

soul-tenanted death-head that crooked gruesomely down on the shoulder

and lifted its eyes to Driscoll's in greeting. They were glowing coals,

those eyes, glowing with the virile fire of twenty men, however wasted

the face or tightly drawn the yellow parchment skin.

"Murgie!"

Driscoll's exclamation was a shudder rather than the surprise of

recognition. What could it be that had grown so--so _terrible_ in

the weazen, craven miser! And to find the abject little coward on a

battlefield, and wounded! An occasional bomb even then screeched

overhead. And he was clothed in uniform, a soldier's uniform, he, Don

Anastasio!

"Gra-_cious!_" Driscoll muttered.

More and more stupefying, the uniform was not Republican, but

Imperialist. There were the green pantaloons with red stripes, the red

jacket, the white shoes, the white kepi, of the Batallon del

Emperador--a ludicrous martial combination, but pathetic on an aged,

withered man. The Batallon del Emperador? Driscoll remembered. They were

the troop that had surrounded Maximilian during the recent battle in

front of the Alameda, and Murguia had fallen on the very spot. The

venomous Republican was then become one of the Emperor's bodyguard!

As the Republican, so also was the coward gone. The gaunt little old

Mexican seemed oblivious of peril, as fever blinds one to every nearest

emotion. There was even a grimness in the shifting gaze. And a certain

merciless capacity, born of unyielding resolve--born of an obsession,

one might say--was there also. He could have been some great military

leader, cruel and of iron, if those eyes were all. Little shriveled Don

Anastasio, he had no sense of present danger, nor of the red blood

trickling.

"That's bad, that," said Driscoll, overcoming his repugnance. "Here,

I'll get you taken right along to our surgeons."

But Murguia shrank from the offer as though he feared the Republicans of

all monsters.

"No, no," he protested feebly, yet with an odd ring of command. "Some

one on--on my side will find me."

"But you called?" Driscoll insisted.

"Yes, you--have heard from Rodrigo Galan? He was to have sent you a--to

have sent you something for me."

More and more of mystery! Rodrigo had said that Driscoll would see

Murguia to give him the ivory cross, and so it had come to pass. But the

battle, the old man's wound, surely these things were not prearranged

only that a trinket might be delivered.

"How was I to see you?" Driscoll asked abruptly.

Murguia started, and there was the old slinking evasion.

"There, there," said Driscoll hastily. "Don't move that way, you'll

bleed to death! Here, take it, here it is."

Murguia clutched the ivory thing in his bony fingers.

"Maria, Maria de la Luz," he fell to murmuring, gazing upon the cross as

though it were her poor crushed face. In the old days she had made him

forget avarice or fear, and now, before this token of her, the hardness

died out of his eyes and they swam in tears. Driscoll gazed down on him

pityingly. The old man was palsied. He trembled. There passed over him

the same spasm, so silent, so terrible, as on the night of her death,

when he had sat at the court martial, his head buried in his arm.

"Rod said you would want it," Driscoll spoke gently. Then he moved away.

An Imperialist officer was approaching over the field who would bring

the help which Murguia refused to accept of the Republicans.

Driscoll looked back once. The Imperialist officer was carrying Murguia

into the town. He was a large man, and had red hair. His regimentals

were gorgeous. There seemed to be something familiar about him, too.

Greatly puzzled, Driscoll unslung his glasses, and through them he

recognized Colonel Miguel Lopez. Lopez, the former colonel of Dragoons,

now commanded the Imperialist reserve, quartered in the monastery of La

Cruz around the person of their sovereign. But Lopez had once condemned

Murguia to death. A strange solicitude, thought Driscoll, in such a high

and mighty person for a little, insignificant, useless warrior as poor

Murgie. A strange, a very strange solicitude, and Driscoll could not get

it out of his head.

CHAPTER XV

OF ALL NEWS THE MOST SPITEFUL

"O poor and wretched ones!

That, feeble in the mind's eye, lean your trust

Upon unstaid perverseness."--_Dante_.

Her gestures, her every word, were an effervescence. There was something

near hysteria in the bright flashes of her wit. However gay, joyous,

cynical, Jacqueline may have seemed to herself, to Berthe, terrified

though the girl was, Jacqueline's mood was a sham.

"The _frisson_, oh, those few exquisite seconds of emotion, eh

Berthe?" she exclaimed. "Pursued by robbers--the chase--the rescue--and

the jolting, the jolting that took our breaths! Why, Berthe, what more

would you have? Helas, to be over so quickly! And here we are, left

alone in our coach, robbers gone, rescuers gone! Berthe, do you know, I

believe they compared notes and decided we weren't worth it. But I

_should_ have thought," she went on in mock bitterness, "I should

indeed, that at least our Fra Diavolo would have been more gallant, even

if----"

"Even if?" prompted Berthe, then bit her lip.

"Even--Oh Berthe, _fi donc_, to catch me so because I was

wandering!--even if one could expect no such gallantry from the

Chevalier de Missour-_i_. There now, do you tell Tobie to drive

on----"

"But mademoiselle----"

"Say 'Jeanne'," the marchioness commanded, stamping her foot.

"My lady," the girl persisted, but added with affectionate earnestness,

"and my only friend, I was simply going to say that we are not deserted

after all."

"But didn't I see him riding away?"

"_Him_, yes, but look out of the window. See, he's left six or

eight--O--oh----"

It was a joyful cry, which got smothered at once in confusion. Turning

quickly, Jacqueline beheld a little Bretonne with eyes cast down and

cheeks aflame. Yet even then Berthe gave a cosy sigh of relief. There

was cannonading not far away. They had just been taken by brigands, and

as suddenly left alone on the road. Thus Jacqueline's company ever cost

her many a tremor. Yet somehow one of those chevaliers de

Missour-_i_ needed only to appear, and she felt as secure as a

kitten on the hearth rug. A chevalier de Missour-_i_ had but now

ridden up to the coach door.

"Berthe!" whispered Jacqueline severely, so that the girl thought her

dress was awry. "Quick, tuck your heart away in your pocket. It's right

there on your sleeve." Whereat Berthe employed the sleeve to hide her

higher mantling color.

Jacqueline turned on the chevalier at the window, and surveyed

_his_ sleeve. It was covered with dust, but Jacqueline's big eyes

could see through dust. She felt about her a subtle atmosphere that made

her an outsider.

"Ah, Monsieur le Troubadour?" came her bantering recognition.

Mr. Boone's French crowded pleasantly to his tongue tip. "Mademoiselle,"

he returned, "and," he added, with an odd glance toward Berthe, "Madame

l'Imperatrice, uh--how goes it?"

Jacqueline's lashes raised inquiringly, until she remembered how the

lank gentleman before her, with the tender heart of a Quixote, had

mistaken Berthe for the Empress, months before at the Cordova

plantation. She liked him somehow better now for persisting in it.

"Her Imperial Highness," she explained, very soberly, "may deign

presently to observe that you are here, monsieur, though, as you see,

her thoughts are far away. However, if you can possibly give your own to

a humbler person, to myself, dear Troubadour, I should very much like to

know what is to happen next. Use fine words, if you must; even put it

into verse, only tell me----" With an impulsive shove she flung open the

door and stepped into the road. She could still see Driscoll's troop, or

rather the cloud of dust, speeding toward Queretaro, but her arm swept

the horizon impersonally. "Only tell me," she demanded, "what's

happening now, over yonder?"

"Pressing business, ma'am--mademoiselle, and," Daniel lied promptly,

"Colonel Driscoll wished me to make you his excuses."

"The minstrels of old, sir," said Jacqueline, "usually accompanied their

more gallant fibs with a harp."

Her vivacity was rising fast, and for some reason, Berthe darted an

angry look of warning on Mr. Boone. But the poor fellow was blind to

Jacqueline's jealousy of a distant conflict, and he blundered further.

"Jack Driscoll's just that way," he apologized for his friend

cheerfully. "_Abundat dulcibus vitiis_--he's chuck full of pleasant

faults. When there's a clash of arms around, let the most alluring Peri

that ever wore sweet jessamine glide by, and--she can just glide. While

with me----"

"I see. _You_ have stayed. But I, too, like battles, monsieur.

Tobie, get back up there with the driver. There's no admission charge, I

imagine, to this battle?"

Boone gladly offered to take them for a nearer view, but he saw

Berthe--his eyes were never elsewhere--shrink involuntarily.

"Stop, arretaz! Hey there!" he ordered, and the driver stopped.

Jacqueline's pretty jaw fell in wonder. The natural order of things was

prevailing over the artificial. Social status to the contrary

notwithstanding, it was Berthe who commanded here, and not Mlle. la

Marquise. But Jacqueline was happy in it, and perhaps a little envious

too. Ah, those _Missouriens_! This one, who would rather stay than

fight! And that other, who was now fighting for quite the opposite

reason! They had a capacity for variety, those _Missouriens_!

It was much later, after a lunch from Jacqueline's hampers under the

nearest trees, and after the distant fusillades had quieted to an

occasional angry spat, that the ladies' escort of Gringo Grays, bearing

a flag of truce, set out with their charge toward the town. Daniel rode

beside the coach window, and the flaps of the old hacienda conveyance

were drawn aside. He wondered how it happened that the hours had passed

so quickly. He would not believe that his comrades had been fighting,

that many of them had died, so blissfully fleeting were those hours to

himself.

"It's all according," he mused profoundly.

And he could not help singing. He hummed the forlorn chanson of Joe

Bowers of the State of Pike, which Bledsoe, then lying cold and stiff

under a mountain howitzer, had so often bellowed forth.

"It said that Sal was false to me,

Her love for me had fled,

She's got married to a butcher--

The butcher's hair was red."

But he sung it as a plaint, yet not hopelessly, and Mademoiselle Berthe

was the maid entreated of his melody.

The sharpshooters on both sides paused as the coach drove into the

little sweet-scented wood that was called the Alameda, and the

Missourians, with sabres at salute, transferred their charge to the

Imperialists crowding around. Among the latter were some of Jacqueline's

own countrymen, and those, in starvation and defeat, were as debonair as

the cadets of Gascogne.

"A rose, mademoiselle," said one, bowing low. He had an arm bandaged,

and his sword was broken. "An early merciful bullet plucked it for you,

so that it fell unhurt, though the petals of all the others are

scattered everywhere among the leaves, among the fallen branches, among

the shattered statues of our classic grove here. See, like the rose I

tender, you come among us poor broken soldiers of fortune. I think, dear

lady, there will be those above to bless you for it."

Jacqueline smiled behind her tears. "Always a Frenchman, eh, mon

lieutenant?" she said.

The fragrance of the place was smothered under gunpowder and sluggish

fumes. The pleasant drives, the grass, the flowers, were trampled by

gaunt soldiers bearing their wounded, but the young officer murmured on

in the speech of the Alameda's one time fashionable promenade.

"Who is that?" she interrupted.

She pointed over the heads around her to a man bearing someone off the

late bloody field, and that moment staggering across the trenches into

the Alameda. It was an act that moved her, for the rescuer was a richly

uniformed officer, and the other but a common soldier. With Berthe close

behind, she alighted from the coach and hurried forward to help. The

wounded soldier's face lay on the officer's breast, and she saw only his

hair, matted and very white, from which a rusty brown wig had partly

fallen. But more to the purpose she saw that he was bleeding, and the

callous warriors there knew that the angels of the siege had come at

last.

"Lay him in my carriage--but carefully, you!" she said, and was obeyed,

while Berthe deftly fixed cloaks and blankets around the withered form.

Someone mounted with Toby and the driver, and the coach rolled slowly

away to the hospital, leaving behind the two girls staring at the richly

uniformed officer, and the officer staring tenfold harder at them. He

was a large man, with big hands and feet, and for a Mexican he had a

mongrel floridness of skin. His cap was in his hand, and his hair was

red and thin. Amazement and a startled prying anxiety choked his

utterance.

"Now then, Colonel Lopez," Jacqueline addressed him calmly, "may I ask

you the way? I have come to speak with Maximilian."

"La Senorita d-d'Aumerle!" he stuttered.

"Faith, no other, who is awaiting your pleasure, senor."

"You come from, from--Mexico?"

"But hardly to chat with you all the afternoon, caballero."

"From Mexico! From the capital!" he kept repeating. The man's finger

nails cracked disagreeably, and his features worked in an extreme of

agitation. He tried to fix his shifting blue eyes upon first one and

then the other of the two girls, as though to ferret out what they must

know. "You do bring news from there?" he said huskily. "What of Marquez?

Is he coming? Shall we have the aid he went for? When----"

"Ah, the medal for military valor!" observed Jacqueline. "Indeed, mi

coronel, all must acclaim your bravery, as well as--your loyalty. But

take me to your beloved Prince Max, for I do assure you, senor, my news

goes not without myself."

"He visits the hospital every day," Lopez advised reluctantly. "Perhaps

if I should take Your Mercy there first----"

Passing on through the ravaged Alameda, they entered the streets of

Queretaro.

"Hear!" Jacqueline exclaimed. "Such a quantity of vivas and clarins and

national hymns and triumphant dianas, one would imagine, for example,

that there had been a great victory?"

"Eh? Oh yes, or a hearty breakfast, senorita."

Which was more essential. And why not? Hope's bright hue blotted out

emaciation. They had broken through to food that day. Bueno, could they

not do it again? Old croons had returned to their stalls and accustomed

corners in the market place, and as in days of peace were already

squatted before corn or beans heaped on the stone pavement in portions

for a quartilla, a media, or a real, as though the pyramids were not so

pitifully little, as though the wholesale purchase were not made just

that morning in heavy terms of blood.

Behind the ponderous Assyrian-like church of Santa Rosa, in the old,

half ruined monastery and garden, was the hospital of the besieged. A

stifling, fetid odor, far worse than of drugs merely, sickened the two

girls as a foul breath when they passed with their guide between thick

walls into the large, overcrowded rooms. Military medical service was

not yet become an institution in Mexico, and this place was like some

horrible antechamber of the grave. Every cot had its ghastly transient,

and so had the benches, brought here from the different plazas. More and

more wounded were arriving constantly, and those found to be still alive

were laid on the flagstones wherever space for a blanket remained. But

in spite of the morning's fight, in spite of almost daily skirmishes for

weeks past, the sick outnumbered all others; and those who did come with

wounds, and survived them, stayed on to swell the longer list. Men

tossed in fever, craving what they might not have, a cooling draught, a

proper food, and effective medicine, until, with waking, they craved an

easier boon, and died. But the hospital fever, the calenturas, the

gangrene, were not to be all. Out of the diseased air, mid the fumes of

pious tapers, the spectre of epidemic was taking hideous shape over the

many, many upturned faces. The spectre was the tifo, a plague more

dreaded in high altitudes than black vomit in the low.

Jacqueline found Maximilian bending over a stricken cavalry officer. The

Emperor was far from a well man, and his fair skin more than ever

contrasted as something foreign and lonely among the swarthy faces on

every side. His ostentation was now simplicity, as befitted a monarch in

camp. He wore neither sword nor star. His garb was plain charro, in

which he often walked among citizens and soldiers, inquiring about

rations, or requesting a light for his cigar, never minding if a shell

burst and kicked dust over him, and always affable, always ready to

smile and praise. It was a role that came naturally to his gentle soul.

One would like to believe--if one could, alas!--that he had in mind no

kingly precedent.

Pausing unseen, Jacqueline noted tears in the blue eyes as he pinned

some decoration on the officer's bloodstained shirt. A good heart, she

thought, yet ever the prince. In his divine right was he even here,

presuming to send a dying subject to the Sovereign in Heaven with a

"character," with a recommendation for service faithfully done. His

hands trembled from haste, for he would have the soldier appear before

that dread Throne above as a Caballero of the Mexican Eagle. In pity for

them both, Jacqueline asked herself what precedence awaited the new

Caballero of the Mexican Eagle in a Court, not Imperial, but Divine.

Jacqueline had not journeyed her perilous way out of simple friendship

for a desolate prince, but could she have foreseen how his eyes lighted

with gladness to behold one friend who remembered, in sweet charity she

would almost have come for that alone.

"When Your Highness has finished here," she said, glancing at the

inquisitive Lopez near her, "or whenever I can speak with Your Highness

in private----"

There was beseeching in Maximilian's quick scrutiny of her face, as

though the helpless messenger had aught of power over her tidings.

"In--in a moment, mademoiselle," he said tremulously. "I always see

the--new ones, before I go."

The "new ones" were still being brought in, until any first aid from the

distracted surgeons was of the most casual--the ripping of bandaged

cloth, a knot tied, and so on to the next. Followed by Lopez, the two

girls, and several officers of the hospital staff, Maximilian passed

from ward to ward. But Jacqueline's hand seemed always to be threading a

needle, or holding a ligature, or lightly touching a hot forehead, and

in every case the surgeon would nod quickly, gratefully, as to a fellow

craftsman. Berthe the while gazed in tender wonder on her calm mistress,

and nerved herself someway to help also.

And so they came to the withered form in brave red coat, and green

pantaloon whom Lopez had carried off the field. One of the nurses had

placed a handkerchief over his face, because of the stinging flies, but

Jacqueline recognized the thin white hair and the twisted wig as of the

old man whom she had sent ahead in her coach. At first he seemed to be

dead, for he lay very still on the floor, though a surgeon was probing

his wound, and his blood was fast filling the bowl held by the nurse.

But now and again, the straining cords in his emaciated wrist twitched

with the protest of life. Maximilian stooped to raise the handkerchief.

Lopez made a movement to prevent, but restrained the impulse as useless.

And then Maximilian revealed the gaunt, leaden features of Anastasio

Murguia, the father of Maria de la Luz.

Jacqueline fell back with bloodless lips. The father of that dead

girl--and Maximilian! They were face to face, these two! But the

Emperor's expression was of pity only. He sank to his knees, the better

to make the wounded man understand the words of comfort on his lips. For

Jacqueline, the horror of it chilled her. Surely, surely, she thought,

the hidden tragedy must now unmask; because of its very awfulness, it

must! That the prince should be thus oblivious of such a knowledge, and

yet kneeling there, made the scene ghastly beyond words.

"I remember him," said Maximilian softly, looking up to the others. "One

of your orderlies, Colonel Lopez, I believe? Of course I remember him,

for I see him often. He is always near me. Even to-day, on the llano,

during the thickest of the battle, there he was at my stirrup, and there

he must have fallen, in humble, unquestioning loyalty."

Jacqueline drew back in relief, and she imagined that Lopez did also.

Maximilian had forgotten the hacendado utterly.

With a grunt of satisfaction the surgeon drew forth his forceps from the

wound and dropped a bullet to the floor. Next he gently rolled the

patient over on his back, and then it was that Jacqueline saw in

Murguia's hand, in the hand that had been under him, a little ivory

cross. Fainting, unconscious, he still clutched it, from Driscoll's

leaving him on the battlefield until the present moment. By now the

stains of his child's blood were washed away in his own. Jacqueline's

quick eyes caught an inscription on the gold mounting, and leaning close

she read the dead girl's name, "Maria de la Luz."

With the gripping of the bullet and its extraction, or possibly at the

sound of a voice--Maximilian's--the old man's eyes opened, and held the

Emperor's in a deathly stare. Jacqueline watched the piercing beads grow

smaller and smaller in their cavernous sockets, and all the while they

seemed to concentrate their intense fire. The others, except Lopez,

thought it delirium, but Jacqueline would have named it the very

blackest hate. "This man will live!" she said to herself, and shuddered.

Maximilian, seeing consciousness returned, spoke cheerily. "Ah, doctor,

you will have him well and sound within a week, I know? Look to it, sir;

a heroic veteran like this cannot be spared."

A strange distortion wrapped the visage of suffering. "Could that be a

smile?" Jacqueline wondered. But the Imperial party took its leave, and

the tragedy lurking beneath was not revealed, as yet.

Through the throng waiting outside the hospital to acclaim him again as

a prince victorious, Maximilian led the two girls to their coach, and

went with them to the convent of Santa Clara, where he asked that they

be received as guests by the sisters. Here, in the comfortless

_parloir_ of the retreat, he learned the reason of Jacqueline's

daring journey from the capital.

"I bring Your Highness," said she, "the most spiteful news my feeble sex

can ever bring."

Again the involuntary plea for fair tidings swept his face.

"And, and that is, mademoiselle?"

"'I told you so.'"

Maximilan's cheeks paled to the marble whiteness of his brow. He had

just heard the answer to the one question, to the one hope, of all

Queretaro.

"You, you mean Marquez?"

"Yes." And then she told him, and seeing how stricken he was, her

exasperation at his vain incapacity changed to pity for his breaking

pride--which may be called his breaking heart.

"But mademoiselle, I gave my empire into his keeping," he protested, as

though such trust in a man of itself proved that man's constancy. But

the messenger, but Truth, would not recant.

"Then," moaned the Emperor suddenly, "Marquez is not coming back?"

"Nor ever meant to, sire. Listen, Your Highness made him lieutenant of

the Empire, and sent him to the capital for aid. Bien, he turned out the

ministers. He broke into homes, and pillaged even the stanchest

Imperialists. He heard that Puebla was besieged by a Liberal general,

Porfirio Diaz, so instead of coming here, Marquez marches all his army

down there. You will observe, sire, that he wanted the road kept open to

Vera Cruz."

"But why? Tell me!"

"Ma foi, to sell the capital more easily. In any case to be able to save

himself."

"Sell the capital?"

"Just a little patience, sire. Now what did Diaz do, but take Puebla by

assault before Marquez could arrive? Then he turned on Marquez, and

Marquez turned and ran. Oui, oui, sire, he _ran_, ran like the

little ugly, skulking Leopard that he is. To cross a creek, he filled it

with all the ammunition, and kept on running, leaving his army

defenseless behind him. Groan if you must, sire; others have died in

groans. But the Leopard had done this kind of thing before, it should

have been remembered. He got back safely though, and squandered the army

that might have relieved Queretaro to do it. Mon Dieu, what that panic

must have been! One entire battalion surrendered to fifty guerrillas.

Yet the Austrian cavalry, the Hungarians, and some others fought, fought

with their sabres, and won victories too. Helas, they only proved what

might have been. They only proved how Marquez, if he had not hesitated,

might perhaps have saved Puebla and destroyed the Liberals. As it was,

they could only retreat, and hardly two thousand of them, ragged and

bleeding and filthy, straggled back into Mexico during the next few

days. Now they are besieged there. Oui, oui, _besieged_, by Diaz,

by the army of the East, by twelve thousand Republicans, formerly called

brigands. And inside is the Leopard, snarling as ever with his regency

of terror. Oh no, he will not come to Queretaro. Bonte divine, he

cannot. Nor would he. He still holds the capital--for sale."

"No, no, mademoiselle, there you wrong him, surely. Or tell me, then,

who would buy?"

"Probably no one. At least not Santa Anna. The buyer must have an army."

"My friend, this is a cruel jest."

"Earnest enough, parbleu, to make the Leopard forget Queretaro, once he

was safely away."

"Then why doesn't he sell out to Diaz?"

Jacqueline's eyes snapped contemptuously. "Young Diaz," she replied, "is

not a fighter to buy what he can take. It's only a question of a few

weeks."

"Then by all that's mysterious, _who_ would buy? I cannot."

"Of course you cannot. That is why Marquez wants you out of the way,

sire. So he left you here. The Liberals will attend to that for him."

"Then who will buy? Who? Who?"

The blood shot into the girl's cheeks, and one small hand clenched

tightly.

"France--possibly," she said.

The Emperor started as from an acute shock. His thoughts raced backward,

then forward, gathering the whole heinous truth about the perfidy of

Marquez.

"And I," Jacqueline added calmly, though she was still flushed, "I have

forwarded his offer to Napoleon."

"You, mademoiselle? You, an accessory?"

"To Your Imperial Highness's downfall? Ah no, sire! Your Highness is no

longer a factor. Your August Majesty will be eliminated absolutely

before Napoleon can reply to my despatch. As I said, the Liberals around

Queretaro will attend to that. Your Highness has merely delayed the

profit my country might have had from his abdication. Meantime Your

Highness himself has made his own ruin inevitable. But I, sire, I would

not see Marquez, nor receive a word from him, until we were actually

besieged in the capital, and he beyond the hope of coming to Your

Highness here. Now then, if Marquez only holds out until the army of

France returns----"

A deep sigh interrupted her. "No longer a factor," murmured the Emperor.

Thus quickly, then, could the world take up its affairs again after his

elimination!

"Mademoiselle," he cried suddenly, generously, "you are--superb! Dear

little Frenchwoman, you are, you are!"

"Poof!" said Jacqueline. "But don't you see, sire," she hurried on

eagerly, "that we will have to fight the Americans? Yes, yes, then they

can no longer say they _drove_ us out."

"Indeed they cannot. And I, among the first, and the most heartily, do

wish you a warlike answer from that firebrand of a Napoleon. But tell

me, why do you come to Queretaro? How did you come?"

"How? Easily. All the guerrilla bands--except one, which I escaped--are

concentrated either here or with Diaz."

"And Marquez let you come, you who are so important to him now?"

"As though he could help it, parbleu! My message to Napoleon was in my

own cipher, and after he had sent it by a scout to Vera Cruz, I informed

him that in it I had directed Napoleon to send his answer to me at

Queretaro. Otherwise Marquez would have kept me in prison rather than

let me go. But as it was, he assisted me through the Republican lines by

a secret way he has arranged for his own escape, if need be. So----"

"But why did you wish to come at all?"

"Ma foi, as if I knew! A matter of conscience, I suppose."

"Matters of conscience are usually riddles."

"Like this one? Bien, I am still trying to get Your Highness to leave

the country. But this time, sire, it is to save you."

"To save me?"

"Of course, on account of France."

"Oh, on account of France?"

"Why else? If--if anything happens to Maximilian, France will be blamed.

Oh why, why did you not escape this morning, while the road was open?"

For the first time during the interview the fire of high resolve leaped

into the prince's eyes. "But could I, in honor?" he demanded sternly.

"Think of the townspeople, abandoned to the Liberal fury. Their Emperor,

mademoiselle, means to face the end with them, here, in Queretaro."

The dignity of his catastrophe was already beginning to appeal to him,

to exalt him, even as the vision of a Hapsburg winning his empire had so

often done before.

"But," protested the girl, "if they capture Your Highness, if they--if

they hold you for trial?"

She stopped, for Maximilian was laughing, and laughing heartily. The

idea of hands laid on him, an Archduke of Austria--ha, he was grateful

to her. Its very absurdity had given him the first relaxation of a laugh

in months.

"Nevertheless," persisted Jacqueline, whose heritage of a revolution was

an obstinate bundle of these same absurdities, "nevertheless, I had

hoped to save Your Highness with my news, since it is news that leaves

no hope. Why not, then, escape? Treat for terms, do anything, only save

your followers and--yourself, sire?"

But she found it impossible to sway him from this, his latest conceit.

His new role, the more desperate it looked, only ensnared him as the

more worthy. He contemplated the end serenely. As a military captain he

was culling laurels against theatric odds. His heroic loyalty to a lost

cause, with perhaps a little martyrdom (of personal inconvenience), how

these would count and be not denied when he should return to his destiny

in Europe!

His was even a mood to consort with lofty traits in others, and in a

kind of poetic ecstasy he thought of Jacqueline's steadfast devotion to

her country's glory. And he was moved again by the vague, chivalrous

longing to bend the knee, to do her some knightly service. But--yes, he

seemed to remember, there _was_ such a service to be done, yet and

yet--no, he had forgotten.

Then quite curiously, yet still without remembering, he dwelt in reverie

on that man named Driscoll who had so filled the morning with valiant

deeds.

CHAPTER XVI

VENDETTA'S HALF SISTER, BETTER BORN

"When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will

be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen."

--_Emerson_.

Just outside Driscoll's tent, under the stars, a fragrant steak was

broiling. The colonel's mozo had learned the magic of the forked stick,

and he manipulated his wand with a conscious pride, so that the low

sizzling of flesh and flame was as the mystic voice in some witch's

brew. There were many other tents on the plain, a blurred city of

whitish shadows against the night, and there were many other glowing

coals to mark where the earth lay under the stars, and the witching

murmur, the tantalizing charm of each was--supper. In this wise, and

thinking themselves very patient, men were waiting for other men to

starve to death. The besieged had tried, but they had not again cut

through to food.

In Driscoll's tent there was a galaxy of woolen-shirted warriors, a

constellation of quiescent Berserkers. For they were Missouri colonels,

except one, who being a Kansan, required no title. They were

tobacco-chewing giants, famous for expectoration. Except Meagre Shanks,

who tilted his inevitable black cigar now toward one eye, now toward the

other. Except the Storm Centre, who fondly closed his palm over his cob

meerschaum and felt its warmth and seemed far away, a dangerous poet.

Except Old Brothers and Sisters, most austere of Wesleyans, who had

neither pipe nor quid. He was cleaning his pistols. They were men hewn

for mighty deeds, but--cringe must we all before the irony that neither

life nor romance may dodge--it was not a mighty deed which that night

was to exact of them, which yet they were brave enough to do, though

sorry the figures they thought they made.

Politics was their theme, since men, though busy with war and death,

must yet relieve their statesmen, especially after supper, and neatly

arrange the Tariff, Resumption, or whatever else. Like oracles the

ex-Confederates held forth that the Yankees had only driven out the

French to march in themselves, and so tutor the Mexicans in

self-government. To which the Kansan ventured a minority opinion, though

being thus a judge of the bench, as it were, he had no need of the oaths

he took.

"Why God help me and to thunder with you, the United States ain't aiming

at any protectorate. You unreconstructed Rebs simply cain't and won't

see good faith in the Federal government!"

"Carpet bags?" Driscoll murmured sweetly. It was the majority opinion.

"Yes sir'ee," and Daniel took the cue as a bit in the mouth, "there's

blood on the face of the moon up there, _acerrima proximorum odia_,

by God sir! Look at the troops at our elections! Look at the Drake Test

Oath! Look at----" Mr. Boone was fast getting vitriolic, in heavy

editorial fashion, when a famished face, a wolfish face, appeared

between the flaps of the tent. "Look at--_that!_"

Politics vanished, war and death resumed their own.

The whole mess stared.

"Sth-hunderation, it's an Imperialist!" lisped Crittenden of Nodaway. He

pointed at the newcomer's uniform, which was of the Batallon del

Emperador.

"Well, bring him on in," said Driscoll to the pickets gripping the man

by either arm.

"He was trying to pass through our lines," one explained. "And when we

stopped him, he begged hard to be brought to the Coronel Gringo, that

is, to you, senor."

The mess turned curiously on Driscoll. Why a half dead soldier of the

Batallon del Emperador should have a preference as to his jailer was

beyond them. But they were yet more puzzled to hear Driscoll address the

prisoner by name.

"See here, Murgie," he said, "is this the occasion Rodrigo meant when he

talked about my meeting you soon? Is it? Come, crawl out of the grass.

Show us what you're up to. No, wait, feed first. There's plenty left."

But the old man had not once glanced toward the table. Whatever the

pangs of hunger, another torment was uppermost.

"What do you mean by this," Boone demanded, as though personally

offended, "you've got the hospital color, dull lead on yellow? Here,

take a drink. Yes, I know, it's mescal, out-and-out embalmed deviltry

that no self-respecting drunkard would touch, but Lord A'mighty, man,

you need _something!_"

Murguia shook his head irritably. Offers of what his body craved were

annoying hindrances before the craving of his soul. He twitched himself

free of the sentinels, and limped painfully to where Driscoll sat. He

wore no coat, but his green pantaloons with their crimson stripes were

rolled to the knee, and the white calzoncillos beneath flapped against

his skeleton ankles. His feet were bare, the better for an errand of

stealth in the night. He was a pitiful spectacle, yet a repulsive, and

the Americans despised themselves for the strange impulse they had to

kick him out like a dog. They watched him wonderingly as he tried to

speak. He panted from his late rough handling by the sentry, and his

half-closed wound gave excruciating pain. The muscles of his face jerked

horribly, but his will was tremendous, merciless, and at last the cords

of the jaw knotted and hardened.

"To-morrow morn--morning," he began, "the Emperor will fight. It is

arranged for--for daybreak, senores. To to fight--to break

through--to--to ESCAPE!"

"W'y then," exclaimed Harry Collins, the Kansan, "_good_ for him!"

The parson snatched off his brass-bowed spectacles, and his brow lowered

fiercely over his cherubic eyes.

"And so _you_ had to come and tell us?" he demanded.

But the traitorous old man had not the smallest thought of his shame,

nor could have.

"You--you will let him _escape?_" he challenged them in frantic

anger.

The mess stole abashed glances at one another. They would, they knew

well enough, have to act on this information. But they were men for a

fair fight, and they had no stomach to rob the besieged of a last

desperate chance. For a moment they were enraged against the informer.

"We'll just keep him here," said one.

"Yes, till morning. Then he'll tell no one else, and _we_ won't.

Poor old Maxie!"

"Sure," ejaculated Collins, "give Golden Whiskers a show!"

The wolfish light in the sunken eyes quickened to a flash. Lust for

Maximilian's capture turned to chagrin.

"Senores, senores mios," he whined, "you do not know yet, you do not

know, that if Maximilian is not taken----"

"Ah, here now," growled Clay of Carroll, "you needn't worry so much.

He'll be driven back into the town all right, I reckon."

"And what then, senor? No, you do not know. Your general,

senores--General Escobedo--has orders to--to raise the siege."

"_What?_"

"Si senor, to _raise_ the siege! The orders are from San Luis, from

the Senor Presidente there. He--he thinks the siege has lasted long

enough."

"Great Scot!"

"Precisamente. Yes, it would look like--defeat. It would, if--you don't

capture Maximilian by daybreak."

Meagre Shanks brought his boot soles wrathfully to the ground, kicking

the stool back of him. His whole mien exuded a newspaper man's contempt

for faking. "Now then, young fellow," and he shook a long finger at the

ancient Mexican, "here you know all that Maximilian knows. And here

again you know all that the Presidente knows. All right, s'pose you just

tell us now more or less about how mighty little you _do_ know?"

"It's--it's like a message from El Chaparrito," the parson demurred.

"From Shorty?" Daniel almost roared. "Oh come, Clem, don't you go to

mixing up the unseen and all-seeing guardian of the Republica with this

dried-up, wild-eyed specimen of a dried-up--of, of an old rascal. No one

ever hears from El Chaparrito 'less there's a crisis on, and is there

one on now? You know there ain't. If there was, someone would be hearing

from Shorty--Driscoll there, prob'bly. But there ain't. Shucks, this old

codger is only plum' daft. Aren't you now"--he appealed querulously to

Murguia, "aren't you just crazy--_say?_"

But even as the Americans breathed easier, they stared aghast at the old

man.

"Crazy?" he repeated. "Crazy?" he fairly shrieked, clutching Boone by

the sleeve. "No, I am not! Senor, say that I am not! No, no, no, I am

not crazy, not yet--not--not before it is done, not--before----"

"God!" Boone half whispered. "Look at his eyes now!"

The old man checked himself in trembling. No help for him lay in human

testimony. But there was his own will, which had driven his frail body.

Now as a demon it gripped his mind and held it from the brink.

"Go, out of here, all of you!" he burst on them. "Go, I have more to

tell--more, more, more, do you understand?--but I'll tell it to no one,

to no one, unless to Mister Dreescol."

A raving maniac or not, canards or not, there might be in all this what

was vital. The Americans stirred uneasily, in a kind of awe, and at a

nod from Driscoll they left the tent.

Murguia grew quieter at once. His faculties tightened on the effort

before him. He was alone with the man who would understand, so he

thought; who had the same reason to understand, so he thought.

Driscoll had shared nothing of the late emotions. He had smoked

impassively. His interest was of the coldest. Only his eyes, narrowed

fixedly on the Mexican, betrayed the heed he gave. When the others were

gone, he uncrossed his legs, and crossed them the other way, and thrust

the corncob into his pocket.

"Sit down!"

Murguia dropped to the nearest camp stool.

"Now then, you with your dirty little affairs, why do you come to me?"

Murguia leaned forward over the table between them, his bony arms among

candles and a litter of earthen plates. The odor of meat assailed his

nostrils. But the hunger in his leer had no scent for food.

"This _is_ the time I meant, senor, when Rodrigo told you that you

would see me."

"About the ivory cross? But I gave you that a month ago."

"A month ago--a month, wasted! How much sooner I would have come, only

another had to be--persuaded--first."

"Oh, had he? Then it's not about the cross? And this other? Suppose I

guess? He was--he was the red-haired puppy, my old friend the Dragoon,

who carried you off wounded that day? Humph, the very first guess, too!"

Murguia darted at him a look of uneasy admiration.

"I would have told Your Mercy, anyway," he said, half cringing. "Yes, he

is Colonel Lopez."

"And you 'persuaded' him?"

"Events did. Since the siege began I've tried, I've worked, to convince

him that these same events would happen. Ugh, the dull fool, he had to

wait for them."

"I can almost guess again," said Driscoll, as though it were some

curious game, "but if you'd just as soon explain----"

"Listen! You remember two years ago at my hacienda, when Lopez sentenced

you to death? But why did he sentence you to death, why, senor?"

"That's an easy one. It was because he didn't want my offer of

Confederate aid to reach Maximilian."

"But why not? I will tell you. It was because he was trying even then to

buy the Republic's good will, in case--in case anything should happen.

But he was _afraid_ to change, the coward! He must first

_know_ which side would win. I am his orderly--_he_ knows why

I am--and I've tried to drive it into his thick wits that the Empire is

damned and has been, but he still doubted, even when we were starving

again, even when every crumb was gathered into the common store, even

when it was useless to shoot men for not declaring hidden corn, even

when forced loans were vain, since money could no longer buy. No senor,

even with proofs like these, Miguel Lopez was stubborn."

"I'd prob'bly guess he was a loyal scoundrel, after all."

"More yet, he has fought bravely, making himself a marked man in the

Republic's eyes."

"Then why----"

"Because so long as the Empire had a chance, or he thought it had, he

hoped for more coddling. You see, senor, he thought Marquez was coming

back with relief. There was that--that Frenchwoman you know of--who

brought news from the capital. But Maximilian dared not make the news

public. He forged a letter instead, a letter from Marquez, and he had

its contents proclaimed. Marquez had been delayed, so all Queretaro

read, but he had at last destroyed the Liberals in his path, and was

then hurrying here with his victorious army. This false hope blinded

Lopez with the others in there. But when Marquez did not come, when

utter demoralization set in, when we were a starving town against

thirty-five thousand outside, when there were scores of deserters every

day, when any man who talked of surrender was executed, and still no

Marquez, then Lopez began----"

"I see, he began to be persuaded?"

"Still, he wanted to be a general. But the other generals forced

Maximilian not to promote him."

"So he was disappointed?"

"And persuaded, senor. The sally was already planned for this morning,

but Lopez argued obstacles, and so got it postponed until to-morrow

morning. He wanted to--to act on his--persuasion. And that is why,"

Murguia got to his feet and limped around the table to Driscoll, "and

that is why," he ended in a croaking whisper, "why I am here!"

"And the red puppy, how near here did _he_ come with you?"

Again Murguia darted at his questioner that uneasy glance of admiration.

"Lopez is waiting between the lines," he replied. "As to our own lines,

we passed them easily, since Lopez commands the reserve brigade and

places the sentinels himself around La Cruz monastery."

"Oh, does he?" Driscoll whistled softly. "But what's your plan?" He put

the question sympathetically, which disturbed Don Anastasio vastly more

than the American's peremptory tone in the beginning. "What's your

plan?" he asked again, gently coaxing.

Murguia hesitated. This polite drawing-room interest was the most

ironical of encouragement for villainy. Driscoll frowned impatiently,

but at once he was smiling again. He placidly filled his corncob, and a

moment later, his gaze piercing the tobacco smoke, he said, "Then I'll

tell you. You're here to make a dicker, you and your tool between the

lines. The monastery of La Cruz on top of the bluff is the citadel of

Queretaro. Maximilian has his quarters there. The troops there are the

reserve brigade. This puppy, this mongrel, commands the reserve brigade.

He places the sentinels. And you are his orderly.--Oh, I haven't

forgotten how he let you off that time he condemned me!--So now you are

his orderly, for your own reasons and his. And here you are, talking

mysteriously about _capturing_ Maximilian. But you don't mean that,

snake. You are here to _sell_ him! Howsoever," and smiling a little

at the stilted phrasing, Driscoll paused and delicately rammed the

tobacco tighter in the bowl, "howsoever, Murgie, you've come to the

wrong market. No, there's no demand for Maximilians just now, not in

this booth. But why in blazes didn't you go to Escobedo? With his

Shylock beard, I reckon _he'd_ take a flyer in human flesh."

"I was going to him, but I came to you first, to take us there, to take

Lopez and myself, I--I thought you would manage it all, because

you--Your Mercy is the strongest, the most resourceful----"

"Resourceful enough, eh, to dodge the bullets you had fixed up for me

once? Thanks, Murgie, but I liked your attentions then better than your

slimy advances now. By the way, how are you going to get to Escobedo?"

The tone was honey itself.

Murguia gasped, yet not so much to find himself a prisoner, as to find

himself mistaken in the American.

"Now maybe," Driscoll suggested, "maybe you'll be wondering yourself why

you bring your dirty little affairs to me? Lopez may be an open book,

but you seem to've read _me_ wrong. Prob'bly the language is

foreign."

Murguia's jaw dropped, and he gaped as one who beholds the collapse of

high towering walls. It was his system of life, of motives calculated,

of humanity weighed. It was the whole fabric of hate and passions which

quivered and crashed and flattened in a chaos of dust before his wildly

staring eyes.

"You mean, senor, you mean you do not want--as well, as _I!_--to

bring to his end this libertine, this thief of girlhood, this prince who

scatters death, who scatters shame, this--this----"

"Man alive, you're screaming! Stop it!"

With his nails the old man combed the froth from his lips.

"But you too have cause," he cried, "cause not so heavy, but cause

enough, as well as I! There was my daughter, my little girl! With you

there is that French wo----"

He stopped, for he thought he heard the sharp click of teeth. But

Driscoll was only grave.

"Well, go on," he said. "But--speak for your daughter only."

"I can't go on. I won't go on," Murguia burst out desperately, and flung

up his arms. "If you don't understand already, then I can't make you.

It's useless. A book? You're a stone! But any other, who had a heart for

suffering, in your place would----"

"Oh shut up, Murgie!" cried Driscoll wearily, but in something akin to

supplication.

With the serpent's wisdom, the tempter struck no more on that side. His

fangs were not for the blighted lover. What, though, of the soldier?

"No one doubts, senor," he whined unctuously, "that Your Mercy is loyal

to the Republic. So it cannot be that Y'r Mercy knows----"

"See here, Murgie, I'm getting sleepy. But I'll find you a comfortable

tent, with plenty to eat, and a polite guard----"

"Senor," stormed the old man, "I tell you you don't know what this means

to the Republic. Maximilian will escape, no matter the cost. At daybreak

there is to be a concentrated attack on some point in your lines; but

where, nobody knows except Miramon. Then Maximilian will cut through

with the cavalry. The infantry will follow, if it can. And after them,

the artillery. You Republicans may not even know it until too late,

because meantime you will be fighting the townspeople, thinking you are

fighting the whole army."

Driscoll roused himself suddenly. "The townspeople?"

"Si senor, they are to be a decoy. Some volunteered, the rest were

drafted. They have been armed, but they are only to be killed, they are

only to draw the Republican strength, while the Emperor and the army

escape."

Driscoll sprang from his seat, in an agitation that was Murguia's first

hope.

"Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, "that this Maximilian who makes

speeches about not deserting intends now to sacrifice these poor

helpless devils? Prove it!"

Murguia had touched neither lover nor soldier. But what man was here, in

boots and woolen shirt, puffing angrily at a corncob, yet sitting in

judgment supreme on the proud Hapsburg himself? Blindly stumbling,

Murguia had touched the inexplicable man who was of stone, and the

baffled fiend that was in him leaped up with a cry of glee.

"To prove it?" he cried, "Ai, then Lopez shall walk with you in our

outer trenches. For in them you shall see the doomed townsmen

themselves, a thousand townsmen, sleeping there until the dawn.

Afterward, when Maximilian is safe, they who are still alive will be

free to surrender."

"And then----" But Driscoll knew the temper of the siege. What with the

chief prize lost, there would be scant mercy for surrendered townsmen.

"God in heaven," he muttered fervently, "if there's any to suffer, it

might as well be the guilty one, and a thousand times better one than

one thousand! A man's a man, or alleged to be!--Murgie, you wait here,

I'm going to call the others."

The others came, and heard. It was the court en banc, five Missourians

and a Kansan. And the culprit was a Caesar. But they hewed forth their

Justice as rugged and huge, and as true, as would the outlaw, Michel

Angelo. Like him, they were their own law. Nor were they nice gentlemen,

these Homeric men who spat tobacco. Finding their goddess pandered to by

those who were nice gentlemen, and finding the gift of these a pretty

scarf over her eye, they roughly tore it away. For them she was not that

kind of a woman.

"W'y, this prince is no Christian," Crittenden announced in querulous

discovery.

"One thousand loyally dying for their sovereign," Daniel mused, his

romantic soul wavering. "Sho!" he cried the instant after, "that thing's

out-dated!"

"And the prince there----" began the Kansan angrily.

"May just go--to--the--devil!"

All swung round on one of their number. It was the parson himself who

had pronounced sentence.

Then they set out under the stars to attend to it.

CHAPTER XVII

UNDER A SPANISH CLOAK

"What misadventure is so early up,

That calls our person from our morning's rest?"

--_Romeo and Juliet_.

Just within their own bivouac four Missourians waited with eight horses.

Driscoll and Boone, and the small limping shadow of Murguia between

them, went on outside the sentry line toward the Alameda. When they

returned, a stranger accompanied them, a little distance apart.

"It's true," Driscoll whispered to those who had staid. "The trenches

are filled with townsmen. _He_ took me."

The Americans glanced once the stranger's way, and grunted. He was a

large man, hidden to the eyes in a Spanish cloak. For all the charity of

darkness, he seemed ill at ease, and held himself from them, a marked

figure, alone. A leprosy in himself tainted his every thought. He would

not willingly come near any man. He understood English, unhappily now

for him, and Boone's warning as they mounted seared like vitriol. "Look

out, Harry, don't touch the filthy skut! It'll take the rotting of death

to clean your fingers." After that, even Murguia drew involuntarily away

from the stranger.

They circled the town widely, having only Republican challenges to

quiet, and they dismounted under the trees which shade the valley to the

northeast, between the Sangremal, or mound of La Cruz, and the

besiegers' range of hills. Here, under La Cruz's steep bluff, the

Republican general-in-chief had his quarters, and here he kept a hawk's

jealous watch on the walls above, where slept his country's invader.

Open battle is clear honor, so reckoned; but it takes a brave man to

dive for a pearl in slime. Driscoll was the one to conduct Murguia and

his gloomy companion into the presence of General Escobedo. When he

rejoined the other five outside the tent, he was alone.

"Well, come on," he said as he mounted under the trees. "We needn't stay

for the rest of it, thank God."

For a while they rode in silence back toward their camp. They passed

under the aqueduct and entered the open plain. Then the parson stretched

out his hand to the pommel of Driscoll's saddle.

"Well?" he ventured softly.

"Well, Clem, it's done."

The others crowded their horses nearer.

"I want to tell you all," Driscoll abruptly began again. "I want to tell

you that I've just seen the strangest thing of my whole life, right back

there in that tent. I--well, it's simply flattened me out!"

"You mean Lopez, Din?" one asked tentatively.

"Lopez? No, no, there's nothing strange in him. Any low hound will sell

out to save his hide. No, Dan, I mean the other. I mean the old man.

He's the one who used to run the blockade off Mobile, and a

whiter-livered, more contemptible old grandmother I never hope to see

anywhere, no, never! Yet not a month ago, the day of that Cimatario

scrimmage, I found him on the battlefield, and he had been wounded. But

he didn't seem to know it. He didn't even seem to know that the shells

were still banging all around him."

"An _old_ coward, too!" someone muttered.

"But wait. He used to be one thing worse, one thing more, than a coward.

He was a miser, and such a miser that he _made_ himself face

danger. You should have seen him running a blockade, with the Yankees

chasing behind. He trembled--I tell you, he trembled like a withered

cottonwood leaf on a broken stem. Yet he whined against stoking with

turpentine, because it cost a little more. I'd 'a' thought, I did then,

that the miser was in his bones until the last trumpet. But to-night,

back in that tent just now----"

"Well?"

"Well, he _refused_ money! He refused _gold_! He didn't seem

to know what it was, any more than he did bullets a month ago. Escobedo

asked him his price, and shoved a glittering heap across the table at

him. You saw how he acted when we offered him something to eat? Well, he

looked the same way at the gold. He acted impatient. He didn't want to

see anything except Lopez. But you'd have called it a miser's eagerness,

the way he watched that Lopez. Only a miser don't exult when it's

someone else who pockets the money."

"Maybe they'll divide?"

"Not much, because Murgie could have had his share over and above. No,

it wasn't that. It wasn't the gold. He was greedy--for a soul! He wanted

to see Lopez _bought_, and no hitch. And when it was done, he wet

those catfish lips of his with his tongue. I believe the devil in hell

must look just that way when he gets some poor sinner. But to think of

that old skinflint, to think of that old feeble cowardly shark not

_knowing_ danger, not _knowing_ money----"

"Come, Din," the parson's blessed, cheery voice interrupted, "let's

hurry back and wash our hands. Then we'll _all_ feel better."

While the six Americans rode gloomily away from what they had done, and

from their own thoughts as they best could, a stealthy company was

forming under the trees among the tents of the Republican general. After

a time the seeming spectres began to move in unison, an undulating wave

that spread as the grayish shadow of a low hanging cloud. The dim

figures slowly swept the little space of valley, on toward the steep

slope of La Cruz, and soon they were climbing, silently creeping, nearer

and nearer the dark walls above.

Two seemed the leaders, and the third limped close behind. But one of

the first two held a pistol ever near the heart of his companion, who

was wrapped to the eyes in a Spanish cloak.

"Who goes----" cried an Imperialist sentry.

"Your colonel, fool!" he of the cloak stopped him short. "I, Miguel

Lopez. I am changing the guard. Return now to your barracks and get what

sleep you can before morning. One of these men with me will take your

place."

In like manner each later challenge was satisfied, and so on to a

cannon-battered crevice in the wall. The spectres passed through the gap

there into a field of graves on the mound's level summit. The earth had

an uncanny softness under their tread. The plots were mostly fresh, of

slain Imperialists still keeping their rank according to battalion. But

the living, the Reserve Brigade, were here as well, sleeping over the

dead. They stirred and grumbled at being disturbed, but thought then no

more of the intruders. The secret plans for the daybreak attack

explained everything. Their colonel, whose voice they knew, was shifting

forces in preparation. But when the dawn came, they awoke to find their

weapons gone, and themselves defenseless prisoners.

Many of the spectral troop fell away to hold the cemetery, but the rest

kept on, and entered the monastery garden. Here there was a battery of

one gun, whose muzzle pointed the way to the Republican camp. Without a

sound the Imperialist gunners were replaced by Republicans. The cannon

was one captured during the Cimatario fight. It was called "La

Tempestad," and bore an inscription, "The Last Argument of Nations." Its

new possessors turned the muzzle squarely on the monastery, not fifty

yards away, where Maximilian lay then asleep.

The shadowy host did not linger in the monastery itself. They swept

through hastily, in at the garden entrance, along the corridor, and out

by the great portico door upon La Cruz Plaza. They had passed the

citadel. The town lay before them. But in the Plaza were more cannon,

which had been taken from the trenches and massed for the supreme

effort. They lay silent, under the silent bells of the church. They lay

under the giant Cross of the Apparition, which was adorned by the

Inditos with garlands in vague memory of pagan rites on that very spot.

They lay under the splendid Arabian palms. They lay among defenders. To

take them was like prowling with a torch among broken casks of

gunpowder. Not a shot must be fired until the thing was done. Otherwise,

a quick second shot was to find the heart of Lopez. So Lopez was

exceedingly cautious. However, he commanded here. He was the Emperor's

favorite. Squad after squad, the drowsy Imperialists moved off, letting

the strangers relieve them. So the critical work was achieved, even as

day appeared over the eastern hills. Then he who had kept so close to

Lopez put his revolver away.

"Your bargain is fulfilled, senor," he said. "Accordingly, here's the

paper I was to give you. It is your safe conduct throughout the

Republic. You are free. Go!"

Lopez clutched the thing that meant his life, but as his fingers

tightened over it, his first greed vanished. He stared about him

uncertainly. The Plaza swarmed with men. They were the gray battalion he

had led there. In the dawning light they were still gray. They were the

Supremos Poderes de la Republica. De la Republica? Yes, of the enemy,

and he had brought them. But it was as though he had just awakened, and

found them there. The enemy? The enemy was in La Cruz! With a sharp cry,

he turned and ran back into the monastery. He brushed aside the hateful

gray uniforms. He ran panting up the stone steps. In the dark hall above

he stopped at a cell door, and pounded, and tugged frantically at its

latch.

"Senor, awake! Hurry! We are betrayed! Hurry! Escape--escape----"

Within came a startled sleepy voice, "What, what's--" which changed at

once to reproving dignity. "Can it be?--Lopez!"

"But senor--sire--the Chinacos, the Republicans, they are here already!"

"Colonel Lopez!" In its shocked surprise the voice was edged with

rebuke. "Man, man, where are your years of training near my person? One

would think you some boorish night-watchman."

Lopez outside the door dropped his hands, and fell abjectedly silent, as

servilely abashed in his lapse of etiquette as though he stood the

traitor unmasked.

"Now then, Miguel," spoke the Emperor more kindly, "go to General Mejia

and the others. Let them have the goodness to attend me here."

Lopez turned on down the corridor, stopped at the doors of Generals

Mejia and Castillo, and the Prince Salm-Salm. At each he tapped lightly,

as one dazed, and announced that the enemy surrounded them. Then,

remembering, he fled.

Within the thick walls that narrowed his state into a friar's cell,

Maximilian rose from his iron couch. "So," he sighed, almost in relief,

"Destiny means it to end in this way." He was calm, and he attired

himself carefully. He chose his general's uniform, with its rich dark

blue, and scarlet cordon. Nor did he forget the star of some royal

order, which to common men seemed a cotillion favor. When he should step

forth that morning, it was to play a world role. The prince must be

serene in the moment of trial. The nations must know that Destiny had

him in hand. And musing thus, he parted his golden beard with dainty

precision. Within a month Europe would acclaim him reverently. He noted

that his high boots glistened. Mejia and the other two, hurrying to him,

fell back in admiration to behold how placid he was.

"Gentlemen," said he, "to leave here, or die! There's nothing else."

He noticed a soft heap at the door, and picked it up.

"Lopez's cloak, a disguise!" he exclaimed. "God bless the poor fellow,

he left it for me."

He wrapped the garment about him, took his pistols, and led the way. In

the dark corridor down stairs a Republican sentry mistook the cool,

commanding figure for one of his own generals, and presented arms.

Maximilian gravely saluted, and with his three companions passed out.

The Plaza was a blurred scene of confusion. Men were awakening to find

their arms gone, and themselves covered by muskets. Shots had been

fired. Curses abounded. Entire companies were being marched away as

prisoners. Republican officers either thought that Maximilian was Lopez,

from his cloak and height, or were too distracted to notice. It is

possible, too, that the victors would have had him escape, that they

might not have the trouble of his disposal, and that they preferred that

he should not thrust it on them. At any rate, he and the three behind

pushed their way undisturbed through cannon and brown stolid men in

gray, and reached the spot where the Plaza narrows into a street that

gently slopes down into the town. But here a guard was posted.

"Pues, hombre, they're civilians, let them pass."

Maximilian turned on him who spoke, and beheld the blackmailer, scout,

deserter, Don Tiburcio. He wore now the uniform of a Republican

explorador. His crossed eye gleamed so humorously up at the Emperor, it

might have been insolence, but it was only the proffered sharing of a

jest. His matter-of-fact tone prevailed, and the guard stood aside. The

four passed on down the street. In comical melancholy Don Tiburcio

looked after them, and then he perceived that a fifth had slipped by the

guard and was following closely behind.

"The saints help us--help _him_, it's Murguia!" Tiburcio muttered

in horror. He recalled the night when Maria de la Luz was found dead.

The old man, coatless, barefoot, in his pantaloons of Imperial green,

limped desperately to keep pace with the great strides of the four

ahead. The broad crimson stripe down each pant leg would break,

straighten, break again, in bizarre accord, with every painful step. It

was a lope, and he more like a starved wolf, a lean, persistent shadow,

ever ready for the chance to spring.

By hastening down into the town, Maximilian thought to rally what forces

were there for a last stand; or, to be more exact, for a last tableau.

The end of his empire must have eclat. He found the town panic-stricken,

since all could see the Republic's standard over the towers of La Cruz.

Dumfounded officers had gotten to housetops, and were using their

glasses. They beheld the enemy as busy as scurrying ants on the

surrounding hills. Clouds of men from every point were sweeping across

the llano toward the town. The advance were already in the narrow

streets. Killing, looting, had begun. Clanging bells, hoof beats, yells,

musketry, and in the distance deep-voiced cannon! The Emperor and his

three companions, with the malignant shadow hovering ever near,

quickened their course through the town. They paused only to dispatch

couriers. Miramon, when found, was to come at all speed with every

possible man to the Cerro de las Campanas. They gained the adobe suburbs

on the western edge, leaving behind the fearsome rising tide of human

sound. An officer forced the Emperor to mount his horse. Many joined

their flight. They crossed broken fields, and reached the summit of the

wedge-shaped rock called las Campanas. Close behind, emerging from the

town, were the first pursuers, who quickly grew to a thick black fringe

around the hill. Shells were falling. The heavens seemed to flower

vengefully, with the Campanas knoll as the one focus. The adobe stockade

crowning the top was soon packed with fugitives, until those within,

like shipwrecked creatures on a raft, barred out those still coming. The

whisper spread that in the town Miramon had been taken shot through the

cheek after shooting many others. The panic grew. Men knew themselves at

bay. They recognized the deathtrap. On the outlying heights the cannon

had their range. Grenades, bombs, grape, and canister, fell as hail.

The Emperor turned to General Mejia.

"Could we cut our way out?" he asked.

Mejia put down his glasses. He paused, then shook his head.

Straightway an orderly with a white flag was sent down the hill. But the

firing did not cease for that. Maximilian, seeing that he could make no

terms for those around him, seeing them fall by scores instead, himself

followed the orderly; and following him, was the ever faithful shadow.

From out the dark fringe a man on a white horse, a black bearded man

with monstrous flapping ears, General Escobedo, rode forth to meet the

Hapsburg. Then Maximilian forgot the eyes of the world, and thought of

her who had suffered with him, who had suffered more than he, to hazard

this, their dream.

"It is our throne, Charlotte," he murmured, and gave up his sword.

CHAPTER XVIII

EL CHAPARRITO

"Meagre were his looks,

Sharp misery had worn him to the bones."

--_Romeo and Juliet._

A few days later Jacqueline and Berthe attended a performance at the

Teatro de Iturbide. It was the first held there since the beginning of

the siege, and to the place late foes were thronging eagerly in what

seemed a most inordinate thirst for amusement. The playhouse was without

a roof. Its metal covering had been widely sown in the shape of bullets,

and only a canvas overhead kept out the sun. But the broiling pit was

filled, as well as circling tier over tier of loges, and in the street a

great crowd jostled and surged, like people who stare at the dead walls

of a jail because a man is being hanged inside. If the curious cannot

have both Time and Space to their liking, then the more ghoulish will

gorge themselves on the coincidence of Time alone. "Now," they whisper

awesomely, "his hands and feet are being strapped! What _must_ he

be thinking this very instant, and we standing here?" So those outside

the Teatro de Iturbide sweated patiently. In all evidence it was not an

ordinary performance scheduled for that day.

"Buzzards?" said Jacqueline, looking up and seeing their outspread wings

shadowed on the canvas roof, "Fi donc, _that_ effect is long since

shabby!" But it chilled her, nevertheless.

The curtain was up. A drop, showing fields in green and a receding road

in brown, filled the back. The actors seemed actors solely, and this

idea persisted with the Frenchwoman, as with many another, throughout.

Seven military characters arranged themselves in a kind of state on the

unpainted, slanting stage. They might have been supernumeraries, like

the "senators" in "Othello." At least their severe demeanor became them

awkwardly. They wore uniforms, but not of appalling rank. He who

presided was only a lieutenant colonel, the other six were captains.

Before them, each on a square stool, sat two generals, one with a

bandaged cheek. There were legal gentlemen in plain black, while guards

at stiff attention here and there completed the grouping. Beyond any

doubt, it was a trial scene. And to confirm the surmise, one of the

legal gentlemen, a very peaceable appearing youth, arose and in the

Republic's name demanded the lives of Miguel Miramon and Tomas

Mejia--here he indicated the two generals--and with impressive cadence,

also in the Republic's name, demanded likewise the life of Fernando

Maximiliano de Hapsburgo. The lieutenant colonel and the captains

knitted their seven tawny brows portentously, but they were not in the

least astounded at such a very extraordinary request.

There was no need of a theatrical production at all. Other Imperialists

had not been so unnecessarily distinguished, as for instance, General

Mendez, that ancient enemy of Regules and executioner of Republicans

under the Black Decree. Caught the day Queretaro fell, he was shot in

the back as a traitor. Yet he met a legal death. Taken in armed defiance

of the Republic, identity established, the hollow square and shooting

squad, such was the routine prescribed. But the lesser official relics

of the Empire, six hundred in all, escaped generally with a few months

of prison. The rank and file of the betrayed army had already melted

away. But for the three arch-culprits a trial was deemed requisite, and

President Juarez, in San Luis Potosi, so ordered. Hence the stage

setting as above described.

Maximilian was at first surprised. He had said to Escobedo, "I am ready

to go whenever you can favor me with an escort to the coast, but first I

require assurance that my loyal followers shall not suffer." But the

Republican chief had smiled oddly, and locked him up. Later, however,

Maximilian had seemed content. A trial for his life, that would add the

last needed glamour to the prestige of his return to Europe. So he

affably humored his captors, and was rewarded with humiliation--his

judges could hardly be more obscure. So as he was genuinely sick abed,

he got himself excused from playing his part in the Teatro Iturbide.

The soi-disant Emperor had four conscientious defenders, chosen from

Republican jurists, two of whom were then in San Luis to do what they

might before Juarez. The other two spent eloquence and acumen on the

court's seven tawny brows. Their first point came from Maximilian

himself. It was complacent, this point. The naivete of it was superb.

"I am no longer Emperor," so the defense ran, "nor was I during the

siege; because, before leaving the capital, I drew up my abdication,

which was then countersigned by my ministers. However, it was not to

take effect until I should fall prisoner."

When the Republic recovered her breath, she felt in her amusement a

wounded pride. This prince must think her very simple. So, she was to

recognize the usurper's abdication after she had fought and suffered to

take the usurper? A captured thief draws from his pockets a quit-claim

deed to the plunder he has stolen, and giving it to the court, would

therefore go free! The tragedy changed for a spell to comic opera. And

matters were not helped greatly when next were invoked "the immunities

and privileges which pertain under any and all circumstances to an

archduke of Austria."

Though handicapped by their client's arrogance, counsel yet did their

utmost. They argued law and humanity, with tremulo effects. They prayed

that "the greatest of victories be crowned by the greatest of pardons."

But it was of no use. The bloodthirsty stripling persisted in the

Republic's name. This Maximiliano was a Mexican. In many beautiful

speeches the said Maximiliano had said so. Hence he could not evade

responsibility to the laws of his adopted country. And there was, for

instance, the law of 1862 concerning treason.

Well, in a word, the three accused were straightway sentenced to death;

and Escobedo, approving, named Sunday, June 16th, for the execution. It

might be mentioned of this Escobedo that on two former occasions, when

the circumstances were exactly reversed, Mejia had each time saved his

life. Since Queretaro, there have been comments on the vigor of

Escobedo's memory.

"Poor pliant Prince Max," sighed Jacqueline, "he is still being

influenced to stay in Mexico! Come, Berthe, we must make all speed to

San Luis and see the Presidente."

* * * * *

In the long hall of the Palacio Municipal at San Luis Potosi, before the

old-fashioned desk there, sat an Indian. He was low and squat and

pock-marked, and there was an ugly scar, livid against yellow, across

the upper lip. He had a large mouth, high cheek-bones, and swarthy skin

with a copperish tinge. He was a pure-blooded Indian. At twelve he did

not know a word of Spanish. His race, the Zapotecas of Oaxaca, had all

but been extinguished by the Conquest. Except for the ungainly black he

wore--excepting, too, his character--he might have been a peon, or still

the servant he once had been. But the homely, heavy features of his

round head did not, in any sense, repel. On the contrary, the

countenance was frank, though yet inscrutable. The piercing black eyes

were good eyes, and indomitable, like his muscled jaw. The flat, square

forehead made one aware of intellect, and of force. So short and thick,

he looked a sluggish man, but it was the phlegm of a rock, the calm of

strength, and whatever the peril, almost inanimate. His country called

him Benemerito de America, a title the noblest and rarest in its Spartan

hint of civic virtue.

The Indian's desk was littered with messages from the princes of the

earth. Like his expiring race, he had fought their order, and they had

made of him a wandering fugitive. But now they were imploring him for

one of their number, whose surrendered sword that moment lay across

their petitions. Two of the letters, but not from princes, he had read

with deep consideration. One was from the President of the United

States, the other from Victor Hugo. But these also he shoved from him,

though regretfully, and now he was gazing out over the Plaza, the line

of his jaw as inflexible as ever.

But they were not many, the moments this man had to himself, and it was

not long before a gendarme in coarse blue, serving as an orderly,

disturbed him.

"Well, show her in then," he said, frowning at the card laid on his

desk, nor did he rise when an unusually beautiful but very grave young

woman entered the room.

"At your orders, Senorita de--d'Aumerle. You come, I suppose, to save

him?--But," he added with the austerity of a parent, "it is not

difficult to imagine why _you_ are interested."

"No, Senor Presidente," he heard himself quietly contradicted, "Your

Excellency can not imagine."

He looked up, into a pair of honest gray eyes. But her tone had already

told him enough. He rose to his feet in rugged courtesy. The Indian was

a wise man, and he knew now that other men had whispered falsely about

one exquisite Parisienne.

"Pardon me, child," he said gently. "No, I cannot imagine."

Impulsively Jacqueline leaned over the desk and gave him her hand.

"Thank you," she said, in a voice that trembled unexpectedly. From that

moment, too, she abandoned tactics. The wiles of courts would avail

nothing against the primitive straightforwardness of the man before her.

It seemed, moreover, good and homely, to cast them aside. She took a

seat near the window, since he remained standing until she did, and

waited. He should speak first, and afterward, she would accept. For

there was nothing, she felt, that she could say. O rare tongue of woman,

to so respect the leash of intuitions!

As for Don Benito Juarez, he had not meant to speak at all. But knowing

her now to be not what he had thought, he spoke as he had not to any

plenipotentiary of any crowned head.

"You are a Frenchwoman, senorita," he began. "Tell me, your coming must

be explained by that?"

"Now," said Jacqueline, smiling on him cordially, "Your Excellency's

imagination is getting better."

"And you wish to save Maximilian," the Presidente stated, rather than

questioned, "because he is a victim of France."

"Because he will be considered so."

The old Roman smiled. "My dear young lady," he said, "an answer to

France is the least of my obligations. Yet you expect it, and ask for

clemency, though I deny all the great nations?"

"Oh senor, what's the use? Let him go!"

The keen black eyes regarded her quizzically. "Do you know," he said,

"this is the second time I've heard that question to-day? One of our

American officers had himself put in command of the escort for

Maximilian's two lawyers here, and now I believe he did it simply

because he too wanted to know, 'What's the use?' It was anti-climax, and

a wet blanket over the fervid eloquence of the two lawyers. But

nevertheless, he hit the one argument."

"Yes, yes!"

"In a word, why not brush aside our archduke? He's harmless, now, he's

insignificant? Why not take from him the only dignity left, that of

dying?"

"Of course, Senor Juarez! Of course!"

"And at the same time win bright renown for ourselves, instead of what

will be called harsh cruelty?"

"Surely!"

The smile vanished. The large mouth closed tightly.

"No," spoke the judge of iron. "He dies! That is the truest mercy, a

mercy to those who might otherwise follow him here. And we, senorita, we

have already suffered enough from Europe."

"But the other two?" pleaded Jacqueline. "They are Mexicans."

"They are that, por Dios, and they make me proud of my race. Miramon,

Mejia, they are the leaven. They redeem Lopez, they redeem Marquez, they

redeem the deserters who now so largely form my armies, who before had

deserted me for the French invasion. By the signal example of these two

men to die to-morrow, the world shall know that Mexicans are not all

traitors. And as we grow, we Mexicans, we may grow beyond the empty

loyalty of glowing Spanish words. Remembering such an example, we may

come to be, in our very hearts, breathing things of honor. We have been

shackled because of infamy during the last centuries. Can you wonder,

then, that we use the treacherous weapon of the Conquistadores?--But

that's apart. The loyalty of Miramon and Mejia has been loyalty to an

invader, a wrong their country will not forgive. But our cultured

gentleman of Europe, our vain fool who would regenerate the poor Indito,

he will perhaps not feel so ashamed of us, not when he has two such

companions in death, and not when he learns, though painfully, that the

rod of Mexican justice respects neither immunity nor privilege of birth.

There, senorita, I've had to talk more about this one individual than

about the hundreds of others who have been punished for much less than

he."

"But it must be terrible to die, senor. And _he_ doesn't realize,

while a delay of only a few days----"

"Would suffice for his escape?"

Jacqueline reddened guiltily. "No, to prepare for his end," she said.

The Presidente smiled tolerantly. "Never fear," he answered first her

confusion, "our justice stands committed, and to wink at escape now

would be cowardly. Yet, whether you meant it or not, you are right, and

the execution stands postponed until the nineteenth. A doomed man may

learn much in three days to comfort him--on his way. But the criminal of

all is lacking."

"Marquez, you mean?"

"U'm, him also. But I was thinking of Louis Napoleon, _and_ his

wife."

The order of postponement, being openly telegraphed to Escobedo at

Queretaro, was known at once in San Luis, and caused a fury of

excitement. For none doubted but that it meant eventual pardon. The

tender hearted rejoiced. The rabid ones muttered. The wise shook dubious

heads. And even as Jacqueline and Berthe were hurrying back to Queretaro

in the canvas-covered coach, another caller was admitted roundly on the

president's privacy, without so much as being announced. Juarez wondered

if his orderly had gone crazy, for the newcomer thus obsequiously

presented looked to be a species of ancient vagabond.

"Well, what is it?" the President asked, frowning heavily. He was

curiously irritated. "Stay," he interposed, "those dusty, muddy rags you

have on, that green and red, that's not a Republican uniform?"

"It's of the Batallon del Emperador," replied the stranger, unabashed.

"Bless me the saints! Well, well, well, I suppose you, too, want to save

your Maximilian. But how does it happen that you're not under guard

yourself?"

For answer the old man came nearer. He limped feebly, and the while he

unbuttoned his coarse red jacket. Juarez watched him sluggishly, but

with a hand upon a revolver under the papers on his desk. The stranger,

however, drew forth nothing more sensational than five or six square

bits of parchment. Yet these aroused the President more than a weapon

could have done. They were blank, except at the bottom, and there the

President read his own signature, "Benito Juarez, Libertad y Reforma."

"Your--Your Excellency remembers?"

"How well!" The admission came involuntarily. Juarez was laboring under

an emotion that he could not at first control. He stared at his visitor

in a new wonder. So gaunt, so hollow, so utterly insignificant! The

President's wonder grew.

"You--you gained entrance here by one of these slips?" he questioned

sharply. The old man nodded. "And it was countersigned by----"

"Si senor, by El Chaparrito. The slip said, 'Admit bearer at once.'"

"Then I cannot blame my orderly! But who are you?"

"Anastasio Murguia, to serve Your Mercy."

"Bien, Senor Murguia, and now will you explain what no other messenger

from our unknown friend has done? Who--who is El Chaparrito?"

But, like the wretched messengers who had gone before, Anastasio Murguia

only shrugged his shoulders blankly. "Your Excellency does not know El

Chaparrito?" he asked. "And yet you trusted him, a stranger, with your

signature?"

There was a crafty stress on his words.

"Ah, senor," Juarez placidly inquired, "what if a chief magistrate did

not know when to trust? You are to be informed, then, that one year ago

last October, at Chihuahua, I was saved from a French flying column by

an Indito. The poor wretch had run across the desert with his warning.

But he could prove nothing. He couldn't even tell who sent him, except

that it was a short gentleman, a senor chaparro. Yet it was well for the

Republic that I took his word and fled. Later, when I reached the Rio

Grande, and he wanted my signature to some blank squares of parchment,

which he was to take back to his senor chaparro--well, senor, I trusted

again. That Indito in breech-clout obtained my autograph some twenty

times over."

The President, however, might have added that every Republican officer

was advised first to test any warning on any bit of parchment signed

"Benito Juarez." Yet, as a matter of fact, there came to be such magic

in the name of El Chaparrito that the name of Juarez thereto was only

needed as a guarantee that the lesser name was genuine.

"Now, then, Senor Emissary," said the President, "what danger hangs over

our Republic this time?"

"None, senor. I return the parchment squares left over. El--El

Chaparrito has no more thoughts for the Republic. He thinks," and

Murguia ground his knuckles into the desk top, "he thinks of no one, of

no one--except Maximilian! And he has never thought of aught else. The

Republic? Bah, the Republic was only his tool, Senor Presidente. Only

his tool, but the tool needed sharpening. They say that's the way with

the guillotine, eh, Senor Presidente?"

"But hombre--No, our unseen friend of the Republic, our Chaparrito,

would not ask for Maximilian's pardon?"

"_Pardon!_"--It was fairly a cry of rage--"Yet you, Senor

Presidente, _you_ postpone the execution! _You_ mean to pardon

him!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, I--I think so. But you shall not, Senor Presidente. I come to,

to----"

"Now that's curious. Possibly I, too, am to be sharpened into a kind of

guillotine, eh, senor?"

"All the others were," Murguia returned stubbornly. "That is, all except

one."

"Ha, then El Chaparrito found one man who was incorruptible?"

"Yes. But still Your Excellency is mistaken. El Chaparrito did not use

money to win his agents. That, senor, is the unsafest way of all."

"You would tell me, senor, that El Chaparrito had a safe way?"

"Yes, and it was absolute. He awakened memory, the memory, Senor

Presidente, of wrongs. For example, there was Your Excellency's savior

in breech-clout. He once lived in a forest village down in the Huasteca.

One night Dupin came and burned the huts, and the Indito's family

perished with other women and children there. That village alone gave

the Chaparrito many another messenger or spy, but memories left by the

Empire were plentiful enough everywhere, and cheap. The Chaparrito

simply drafted them, that was all. But once his system failed. Yet--well

the man in that case was an American, and _they_ are liable to be

exceptions to any rule, to any passion. But in the end he was safe

enough too, though something else, that I can't understand, made him

so."

"And what did he do, this American?"

"He took me to Escobedo."

"And you?"

"I took Lopez. That same night Queretaro fell."

"_You?_ Now--now to what particular wrong in _your_ case,

senor, does the Republic stand thus indebted?"

Juarez put the question lightly, even patronizingly. But his steadfast

gaze had not once left his gaunt and battered visitor. By design, too,

he had not asked a second time who the Chaparrito was, because he saw,

or felt, that the old man knew, though former emissaries from that

mysterious source had not known. And Juarez meant to possess the secret.

But with his casual irony he never looked for any such kindling of

memory as then flashed deep in the cavernous sockets opposite him. The

eyes of the aged man glowed and darkened, glowed and darkened, and

seemed the very breathing of some famished beast. It was a thing to

startle even Benito Juarez, who during many, many years had learned the

meaning of civil war. The President leaped to his feet, pointing a

finger.

"You are," he cried, "yes, _you_ are the Chaparrito!--No?--Yes! Ha,

I've struck, I've struck!"

He had indeed. The colossal guile and intellect and will, the giant whom

men in awe called El Chaparrito, was only old, withered Anastasio

Murguia. But the astute Juarez _knew_ that he was right. He knew it

in that one look of consuming, conquering hate. He knew the giant in

that hate. The feeble flesh, Anastasio Murguia, was an incident. Yet

even so, only the President's tenacity held him to where his instinct

had leapt. For under discovery Murguia was changed to a huddled, abject

creature, stammering denial. Yet it must be true, it must. The

strangest, the most weird of contrasts in the same soul and body--yet it

must, it _was_ true!

And Murguia? He might have asked for reward, and had it. But his was

rankest despair. His work was not finished, his goal not attained. And

now his most potent instrument of all, the Chaparrito, was miserably

identified in his own self, was taken from him.

Juarez rose and touched his shoulder, "Come," he said, "there's much too

much tension here. Now then, sit down, so. Let me see, you said your

name was--yes, Murguia. But--why, Dios mio, that's the Huasteca miser!

Well, well, well, and so you are that rich old hacendado who never gave

even a fanega of corn to Republic or French either, unless frightened

into it? But hombre, we've had _big_ sums from the Chaparrito, and

all unasked!"

And yet must it still be true, yet must even this contrast accord. El

Chaparrito had indeed given munificently. But in each case it was to

bridge a crisis. As the shrewdest general he knew a vital campaign, and

aided, if need be. But on a useless one the Republic's soldiers might

starve, might freeze, might bleed and die, without ever the most

niggardly solace ever reaching them from El Chaparrito. Economy was

applied to vengeance, and made it unspeakably grim.

"Once though," Juarez pursued, "you all but lost your Maximilian? I mean

last fall when he started for the coast. He could have escaped to

Europe."

"I know," said Murguia quietly, "but I was near him. If he had not

turned back, I would have done it myself."

"It?"

"The justice which Your Excellency has just postponed three days."

"Dios mio, but our Chaparrito is a dangerous person! He'd have to be

locked up if Maximilian were pardoned."

"But--but Your Excellency will not pardon him!"

"To be sure, I had forgotten. I am to be given a memory. Well?"

"Your Excellency remembers, he remembers Zacatecas?"

"Last February? Certainly I do. Miramon came, but a warning from El

Chaparrito, from you, came first, and a last time I escaped. As it was,

I was reported captured, and I sometimes wonder what Maximilian would

have done had that report been true."

"If I should tell you, senor?"

"Ah, that is beyond even you, since Maximilian has never had the chance

to decide my fate."

"But he did decide, senor. He got word that you were taken at Zacatecas,

and at once he sent orders to Miramon as to your treatment. But Miramon

was already defeated, already fleeing to Queretaro."

"And the orders, the orders from Maximilian?"

"They never arrived. They were intercepted. They--yes, here they are,

but before reading them, will Your Excellency promise to imagine himself

in Miramon's power?"

"I would, naturally. Come, senor, hand them over."

It made curious reading, that weather-blotched dispatch. For Don Benito

Juarez it was reading as curious as a man may ever expect to come by. In

the handwriting of his prisoner, he read his own death sentence.

"Your--Your Excellency sees?" Murguia stammered hungrily.

"H'm, what, for example?"

"Why, that--that Maximilian would not have pardoned?"

"On the contrary, senor mio, that is precisely what the generous

Maximilian did intend. Listen--Miramon was 'to delay execution until His

Majesty should pass upon it.'"

"No--no, Your Excellency, he would not have----"

"O ho, so you think you've missed your last stroke! You think that there

is no memory for me in this dispatch! But don't whine so, because, man,

there is, there is! It may not be the memory of my intended death, but

it is the memory of--intended insult. Oh, what a patriot he must have

thought me, this good, regenerating prince! He had already offered to

make me chief justice. But this time he would have saved me from his own

Black Decree. And I would have been touched by his clemency? I would

have accepted, the grateful tears streaming from my eyes? And thus I

would be regenerated? It sounds beautiful. It sounds like the chivalrous

Middle Ages, when there were Black Princes along with the Black Decrees.

My liege lord _he_ would have been, but my liege Patria, what of

her?--Well, well, well, he has three days in which to understand me

better, and to think of his own regeneration a little."

"Then," cried Murgia, limping gleefully toward him, "then there will be

no pardon?"

"I see," said Juarez, suddenly cold and very calm, "I am now corrupted.

I am now safe, like the others. Take that chair, wait!"