At the hotel in the City of Mexico where Driscoll stopped, the entrance was big enough for a stage coach to drive through. But as to height, it did not seem any too great for the attenuation of Mr. Daniel Boone, who therein had propped himself at his ease, delightfully suggesting a tropical gentleman lounging on a veranda under the live oaks. One shoulder was impinged on the casing of the archway, from which contact his spare frame drifted out and downward, to the supporting base of one boot sole. The other boot crossed it over, and the edge of the toe rested on the pavement of the Calle de los Plateros, familiarly so-called.

Mr. Boone hailed from Boonville, but in Missouri, with Kentucky for ancestral State, such was not a strained coincidence by any means. An individual there of the name of Boone, and a bit of geography likewise distinguished, are bound to fall together occasionally. For instance, a flea’s hop over the map, and Mr. Boone and Boonville both might have claimed the county of Boone. Under the circumstances, Daniel’s Christian name was the most obviously Christian thing his parents could do, and followed (to precede thereafter) as a matter of course.

Now, Missouri, in the beginning of the Civil War, was a very Flanders for battles, and this sort of thing had ended by disturbing Mr. Boone considerably in the manipulation of an 274old hand-press, dubbed his Gutenberg, which worked with a lever and required some dozen processes for each impression of the Boonville Semi-Weekly Javelin. Finally, when Joe Shelby and his pack of fire-eaters were raiding Missouri for the second time, Daniel plaintively laid down his stick in the middle of an editorial on Black Republicans, and what should be done to them. The shooting outside had gotten on his nerves at last. That blazing away of Missourians back home made him homesick. He was like the repressed boy called out by the gang to go coasting. And he went. An editorial by example, he went to do unto the Black Republicans somewhat personally. The Javelinier was a young man yet.

“There’s been rumors hitherto about the pen and the sword,” he mused, “but type, now–that’s hot!” Wherewith he emptied his cases into a sack, took down a squirrel rifle, chased off his devil, locked in the Gutenberg, and joined the raiders. Flinging his burden of metal at General Shelby’s feet, he said, “There sir, is The Javelin in embryo for months to come. Now it’s pi, which we’ll sho’ly feed out by the bullet weight, sir.”

From then on the newspaper man followed his proclivities and turned scout, and it was a vigilant foe that could scoop him on the least of their movements, whether in the field or in their very stronghold, St. Louis itself.

At the present moment Mr. Boone was retrieving a lost familiarity with good cigars. There was a black one of the Valle Nacional in his mouth, and also in his mouth there was a wisp of straw. The steel-blue smoke floated out lazily, which his steel-blue eyes regarded with appreciation. It was an Elysium of indolence. The cigar, the not having to kill anybody for a few minutes, and a place to lean against, these were content. Troubadour phrases droned soothingly in his brain. Of course he had to apostrophize the snow-clads:

275“Popo, out there, grand, towering, whose frosty nose sniffs the vault of heaven, whose mantle of fleecy cloud wraps him as the hoary locks of a giant, whose–Sho’, if I had some copy paper now, I’d get you fixed right, you slippery old codger!”

The wisp of straw hardly tallied with poesy of soul, nor did the lank figure and lean face, nor the cavalry uniform, badly worn, though lately new, nor yet the sagging belt with dragoon pistols. But the eyes did. Those eyes held the eloquence of the youth of a race. They were gentle, or they flashed, according to what passed within. It did not matter necessarily what might be going on without. They would as likely dart sparks during prayer meeting, or soften as a lover’s mid the charge on a battery. Shaggy moustached Daniel, not yet thirty, was a scholar too, of the true old school, where dead languages lived to consort familiarly with men, and neither had to be buried out of the world because of the comradeship. Once, in Pompeii, Daniel blundered suddenly on that mosaic doormat which bears the warning, “Cave canem”; and before he thought, he glanced anxiously around, half expecting a dog that could have barked at Saint Peter himself. From which it appears that the editor had traveled, and it would not be long in also appearing that he had gathered enough of polite and variegated learning to fill a warehouse, in which junk-shop he was constantly rummaging, and bringing forth queer specimens of speech wherewith to flower his inspirations.

Streaming back and forth before the shops in lively Plateros street were elegance and fashion and display, the languishing beauty of Spain, the brilliancy of the Second Empire, the Teuton’s martial strutting, the Mexican’s elation that Europe had come to him and with the money to pay for it. The toughened Boone gazed on the bright morning parade of ravishing shoppers and ogling cavaliers with the unterrified innocence of a child, or of an American. He had the air of 276doing nothing, such as only a newspaper man can have when really at work. He did not look as though he were waiting for some one. But only a half-hour before he had gotten from the saddle. He had just ridden four hundred and fifty miles for the express purpose of waiting for someone now.

Finally the keen, lazy eyes singled out an immense yellow horse and rider from among the luxurious turnouts. “Jack!” he exclaimed gladly. “The Storm Centre,” he improvised, as the new comer approached, “straight as Tecumseh, a great bronzed Ajax, mighty thewed, as strong of hand as of digestion–w’y, bless my soul, the boy looks pow’ful dejected, knocked plum’ galley-west! I never saw him look like that before.”

Man and horse had come all night from Cuernavaca. But Din Driscoll never tired, wherefore Boone knew that something was the matter. At the doorway Driscoll flung himself from the saddle, gave the bridle to a porter of the hotel, and was following, his face the picture of gloom, when he heard the words, “How’ yuh, Jack?” His brow cleared in the instant. “Shanks!” he cried, gripping the other’s hand.

Mr. Boone untwined his boots and for the first time during a half-hour stood in them. As he shook Driscoll’s hand, he shook his own head, and at last observed, in the way of continuing a conversation, “It was the almightiest soaking rain, Din, for the land’s sake!” And he shook his head again, quite mournfully.

Driscoll had not seen Mr. Boone since leaving Shelby’s camp back in Arkansas. He naturally wished to know what was being talked about. But his woeful friend only kept on, “It wet all Texas, heavier’n a sponge, and,” he added, “they ain’t coming.”

“Shanks! You don’t mean––”

“Don’t I? But I do. They’re a surrendered army. The 277whole Trans-Mississippi Department of ’em, pretty near. But not quite, bear that in––”

“But the rain? What in––”

“What did you come down here for, I’d like to know? To say how the Trans-Mississippi wouldn’t surrender, didn’t you? Well?”

“Oh, go on!”

“Well, it rained, I tell you. Didn’t it rain before Waterloo? Didn’t it now?”

Mr. Boone believed in trouble as an antidote for trouble. When he had stirred Driscoll out of his dejection enough to make him want to fight, he deigned to clear the atmosphere of that befogging downpour in Texas.

“You rec’lect, Din, that there war god we put up in Kirby Smith’s place, who so dashingly would lead us on to Mexico?”

“Buckner, yes.”

“Him, Simon Bolivar B., whose gold lace glittered as though washed by the dew and wiped with the sunshine––”

“Now, Shanks, drop it!” Driscoll was referring to the editorial pen which Mr. Boone would clutch and get firmly in hand with the least rise of emotion. Against his other conversation, the clutching always became at once apparent.

“Anyhow,” said Daniel meekly, “he wilted, did our Simon of B. B. calibre, and he gave back the command to Smith. And Smith’s first order, his very first order, sir, was that the Department, the whole fifty thousand, should march into Shrevepoht and–and surrender, by thunder!”

“Dan, you’re not going to tell me––”

“That we surrendered, we, the Missourians, the flower of ’em all? Now s’pose you just wait till Joe Shelby gets back to us in Arkansas, after that conference with the other generals? Then you’ll see what he does. He proclaims things, on wall paper. The Missouri Cavalry Division will march to Shrevepoht, will depose Smith for good, will head off the surrender, 278 will lead the other divisions on to Mexico. And we started to do it too. And then, and then–it rained. Rained, sir, till our trains and guns were mired, and we couldn’t budge! And all the time we knew that regiment after regiment was stacking arms off there at Shrevepoht. Did Little Joe rave? Opened Job his mouth? He did. His fluency gave the rain pointers. I sho’ly absorbed some myself, me, that have language tanks of my own. Well, I reckon all our hearts pretty near broke. But we had our Missouri general and our Missouri governor, and the Old Brigade just decided to come along anyhow. And we’re a coming, Din, we’re a coming!”

Driscoll’s face went blank. He thought of the scant welcome his homeless comrades would get. But Mr. Boone did not notice. He had only stretched his canvas, a big one, and there was a picture to paint. His long body began to straighten out, and his eyes glowed. From Xenophon to Irving’s Astoria, from Hannibal crossing the Alps to Marching Through Georgia, he ransacked both romance and the classics for adequate tints, but in vain. The colors would have to be of his own mixing.

“Din Driscoll,” he began solemnly, “you know that devil breed? Of coh’se, you’re one of ’em. You’re a chunk of brimstone, yourself. And you’ll maybe rec’lect they did some fighting off and on. There was that raw company, f’r instance–boys, hardly a one broke in his yoke of oxen yet–and they hadn’t even gotten their firearms, but they took a battery with their naked hands, and got themselves all tangled up in the fiery woof of death. But you’ll not be rec’lecting that that there Brigade ever lost a gun. And those raids, Din, back into Missouri, a handful back into the Federal country, when men dozed and dropped from their saddles and still did not wake up, and some went clean daft for want of sleep, and fighting steady all around the clock too, fair and 279 square over into Kansas! And there was the night they buried eight hundred!”

In all this Daniel might have said “We,” but reportorial modesty forbade.

“And,” he went on, gaining momentum, “I don’t reckon you’ll be forgetting Arkansas, and the ague and rattlesnakes? And how the small-pox swooped down on that camp of cane shacks? And how the quinine gave out, and–and the tobacco? Lawd!–And how those boys forgot how to sew patches, their rags being so far gone! And how they made bridles out of bark, and coffee out of corn! And how they kneaded dough in old rubber blankets and cooked it on rocks! Well, Jack, there they were, in Arkansas like that, and the War was over at last, and Missouri was just a waiting for ’em. And then, to think that they had to face square around another way entirely! Din, you’ll just try to imagine that there devil breed facing any other way except to’ds home!”

“Don’t, Shanks, you––”

“Devils? They were the wildest things that are. It’s a mighty good thing they didn’t go back. Think of their neighbors across the Kansas line, getting ready for ’em with every sort of legal persecution under the sun, and carpet-bag judges to help! Outlaw decrees? Well, I reckon those decrees will make a few outlaws, all right, and there’ll be unsurrendered Johnny Rebs ten years from now. Shelby’s boys had the look of it. Your own Jackson county regiment would have flared into desperadoes at sight of a United States marshal. They were all in just that sort o’ mood, as they turned their backs on Missouri. And after four years, too! But there, it’s a stiff wind that has no turning, so cheer up! They did, as soon as that deluge got done with and they were headed for Mexico, one thousand of ’em. Soldiers mus’n’t repine, you know. For them, Fate arrays herself in April’s capricious sunshine.”

280Driscoll had to smile. “Careful, there, Dan, don’t stampede.”

“I ain’t, but if now ‘I hold my tongue I shall give up the ghost,’ and I want to tell you first that Texas is a handsome state. We–they–were considerable interested all the way through it.”

“But, Meagre Shanks, where’d you leave ’em?”

“Back in Monterey, drinking champagne with Fat Jenny. Alas, ‘who can stay the bottles of heaven?’”

“Fat–who’s she?”

“Now you wait. They’ve got heaps to do in Texas yet, before they get to Fat Jenny. First, they helped themselves out of their own commissary departments, horses, provisions trains, cannon, everything. Decently uniformed for the first time, and the War over! You should of seen ’em, a forest of Sharpe’s carbines, a regular circulating library of Beecher Bibles. There were four Colts and a dragoon sabre and thousands of rounds of ammunition to each man. They had fighting tools to spare, and they cached a lot of the stuff up in the state of Coahuila. And they fed, and got sleek. This ain’t editorial, my boy. It’s God’s own truth. Adventures every step of the way only did ’em good. They saved whole towns from renegade looters by just mentioning Shelby’s name. They fought all day and danced all night. San Antone was the best. There they gathered in generals, governors, senators, and even Kirby Smith, all yearning to join Old Joe–our Old Joe, who ain’t thirty-four yet.”

The speaker paused, and when he began again, there was a light ominous of inspiration in his eyes.

“At the Rio Grande,” he said, solemnly, “they crossed out of the Confederacy forever, so it was meet and right that there, in midstream, they should consign their old battle-flag to the past. They had not surrendered it, but as a standard it existed for those gallant hearts no more. Woman’s loyal 281hand had bestowed it. Coy victory had caressed its folds mid the powder pall and horror of ten score desperate fields. And now it floated over the last of its followers, ere the waves should close over it forevermore. With bowed heads, they gathered sadly about––”

“Lay it down, Shanks, lay it down,” Driscoll pleaded. He was referring again to the pen in hand.

“All right, Din,” Boone answered hastily. “Yes, I know, we all got kind of weepy too. No wonder Colonel Slayback wrote some verses. Reckon you can stand just one? This one?

‘And that group of Missouri’s valiant throng,
Who had fought for the weak against the strong–
Who had charged and bled
Where Shelby led,
Were the last who held above the wave
The glorious flag of the vanquished brave,
No more to rise from its watery grave!’