“MesÓn” is Spanish for hostelry. In the ancient caravansaries, like the one at Bethlehem sacred to the Christ child, the same accommodations were meted out to man and beast alike. More recently there are “hotels,” which distinguish a man from his beast, usually; though sometimes undeservedly. And so the word “mesÒn” got left behind along with its primitive meaning. But in Mexico word and meaning still go together to this day, and both described pretty well the four walls in Tampico where Anastasio MurguÍa tarried. Excepting the porter’s lodge at the entrance, the establishment’s only roof formed an open corridor against one of the walls, in which species of cloister the human guests were privileged to spread their blankets in case of rain or an icy norther. Otherwise they slept in the sky-vaulted court among the four-footed transients, for what men on the torrid Gulf coast would allow his beast more fresh air than himself?

Don Anastasio’s caravan filled the mesÓn with an unflurried, hay-chewing promise of bustle-to-be at some future date. Except for the camels and costume lacking, the Mexican trader might have been a sheik in an oasis khan. His bales littered the patio’s stone pavement. They were of cotton mostly, which he had bought in the Confederate States, in exchange for necessities of warfare and life. Complacent burros and 28horses were juggling into their mouths some final grains from the sacks over their noses. Peon servants stolidly busied themselves around charcoal braziers.

An American leaned in the cavernous doorway. The tarnished insignia on his collar indicated an officer of Confederate cavalry. He was smoking a cob pipe, of which he seemed quite fond. And as a return for such affection, the venerable Missouri meerschaum lent to its young master an air that was comfortably domestic and peaceable. The trooper wore a woolen shirt. His boots were rough and heavy. Hard wear and weather had softened his gray hat into a disreputable slouch affair. A broad black-leather belt sagged about his middle from the weight of cartridges. Under his ribs on either side protruded the butt of a navy-six, thrust in between shirt and trousers. He watched with dozing interest the muleteers inside as they roped up straw, tightened straps, and otherwise got ready for departure. Then Anastasio MurguÍa appeared coming up the street, just from his lately recorded interview with Fra Diavolo. The weazened little old Mexican was in a fretful humor, and his glance at the lounging Southerner was anything but cordial. He would have passed on into the mesÓn, but the other stopped him.

“Well, Murgie, are we projecting to start to-night?” the trooper inquired in English. “Eh?–What say?”

What Don Anastasio had said was nothing at all, but being thus urged, he mumbled a negative.

“Not starting to-night?” his questioner repeated. “Now, why don’t we?–What?–Lordsake, man, dive! Bring up that voice there for once!”

MurguÍa sank to the chin in his black coat. Glancing apprehensively at the cavalryman’s long arm, he edged away to the farther side of the doorway. Experience had accustomed the ancient trader to despots, but in this cheery youngster of a Gringo the regal title was not clear, which simply made 29tyranny the more irksome. The Gringo was the veriest usurper. He did not justify his sway by the least ferocity. He never uttered a threat. Where, then, was his right to the sceptre he wielded so nonchalantly? Were there only some tangible jeopardy to his pelt, MurguÍa would have been more resigned. But his latest autocrat was only matter-of-fact, blithely and aggravatingly matter-of-fact.

By every rule governing man’s attitude toward man, the SeÑor Don should have been the bully, and the youngster the cringing sycophant. For since their very odd meeting two weeks before, the tyrant had been in the power of the tyrannized. It began on MurguÍa’s own boat, where MurguÍa was absolute. Any time after leaving Mobile he had merely to follow his inclinations and order the fellow thrown overboard. Yet it was the soldier boy who had assumed the ascendancy, and it could not have been more natural were the boat’s owner a scullion and the intruder an admiral.

“And why don’t we start to-night?” the complacent usurper demanded in that plaintive drawl which so irritated the other. “You went for your passports, didn’t you get ’em?”

“Si–si, seÑor.”

“Good! Then to-night it is, eh?–Can’t you speak out, my gracious!”

“You might go to-night,” the trader suggested timidly.

“Alone?–N-o, parting isn’t the sweet sorrow it’s cracked up to be. Besides, I don’t know the roads, but of course that’s nothing to losing a jovial old mate like you, Murgie.”

Don Anastasio smirked at the pleasantry. “But I can’t go to-night, seÑor. I–I have to see–someone–first.”

The trooper betrayed the least impatience. “Now look here–usurer, viper, blanketed thief, honorable sir, you know I’m in a hurry!”

That his haste could be any concern of MurguÍa’s was preposterous, and MurguÍa would have liked nothing better than 30to tell him so. But he did not, and suffered inwardly because somehow he could not. He harbored a dim but dreadful picture of what might happen should the amiable cavalryman actually lose his temper. Loss of patience had menace enough, though the Southerner had not stirred from his lazy posture in the doorway nor overlooked a single contented puff from the Missouri meerschaum.

“I’m sorry,” Don Anastasio paid out the hard-found words through his teeth, “but possibly we can leave to-morrow. Will, will that suit Your Mercy, SeÑor Coronel?”

“Oh perhaps. Anyhow, don’t go to forgetting, now, that I’m in a hurry.”

Don Anastasio breathed easier, and he even grew so bold as to recall a certain suspicion he had entertained. “Your errand down here must be of considerable importance, SeÑor Coronel?” he ventured.

“There you are again–crawling again.” It was evident that the trooper’s normal condition was a great, hearty, calm good humor.

But the Mexican’s shriveled features grew sharper and his moist eyes more prying. His suspicion had tormented him ever since fate had thrown the Confederate in his way. This had happened one stormy night at Mobile. The night in question was pitch dark. The tide was favorable, too, but a norther was blowing, the very same norther that had turned the ImpÉratrice EugÉnie off her course. MurguÍa’s skipper had chosen the hour of midnight for running the Federal blockade outside, and he had already given the order to cast off, when a horseman in a cape overcoat rode to the edge of the wharf.

“Wait there!” the horseman trumpeted through his hand.

It was the first word MurguÍa had ever heard from his future tyrant, and even then the cool tone of authority nettled him. But he reflected that here might be a passenger, and a passenger 31through the blockade usually meant five hundred dollars in gold. He ordered the plank held for a moment.

“They tell me–whoa, Demijohn!–you are going to Tampico?” hallooed the same voice.

“Yes,” MurguÍa answered, and was going to name his price, when without more ado the cavalier rode across, dismounted on the deck, and tossed his bridle to the first sailor.

“Ca-rai!” sneered the astonished Mexican, “one would think you’d just reached your own barnyard, seÑor.”

“My own barnyard?” echoed the stranger bitterly. “I haven’t seen my own barnyard, or anything that is mine, during these four years past. But you were about to start?”

“Not so fast, seÑor. Fare in advance, seven hundred dollars.” MurguÍa looked for the haggling to come next, but somehow the sniff he heard was not promising.

“Usurer, viper, blanketed thief, benevolent old rascal,” the trooper enumerated as courteously as “SeÑor Don” or “Your Mercy,” “you don’t surprise me a bit, not when you charge us three thousand dollars gold for freight on a trunk of quinine!”

“G-g-get back on your horse! G-get off this boat!”

But the intruder calmly drew off his great coat, and MurguÍa saw the butts of pistols at his waist. Yet they had no reference to the removal of the cape. The latter was a simple act of making oneself at home.

“I reckon,” said the newcomer cheerily, “there’s no question of fare. Here, I’ve got a pass.”

By a lantern MurguÍa read the paper handed him. It was signed: “Jefferson Davis, President C. S. A.” Therein Mr. Anastasio MurguÍa or any other blockade runner was required on demand of the bearer, Lieut. Col. Jno. D. Driscoll, to transport the said Driscoll to that part outside the Confederacy which might happen to be the blockade runner’s destination.

The peevish old man scowled, hesitated. He read the order 32again, hesitated again, and at last handed it back, his mind made up.

“Have the goodness, seÑor, to remove yourself from my boat.”

But the lieutenant colonel placidly inquired, “Carry any government cotton this trip? No, I know you don’t. Then you’re in debt to the government? Correct. So I reckon you’ll carry me in place of the cotton.”

The demand was just. For their golden privileges the blockade runners took a portion of their cargo on government account. But MurguÍa knew that the army of Northern Virginia must surrender soon. The Confederacy was really at an end, and this would be his last trip. Why, then, pay a dying creditor?

“The favor, seÑor! Or must I have you kicked off?”

The seÑor, however, with his charger behind him, was foraging over the deck to find a stall, and in a fury MurguÍa plucked at his sleeve. But Driscoll wheeled of his own accord to inquire about horse accommodations, and then the Mexican wondered in his timid soul at his own boldness. It loomed before him as unutterably more preposterous than the lone wanderer’s preposterous act of taking possession single handed. Yet the lone wanderer was only gazing down on him very benignly. But what experience of violent life, of cool dealing in death, did poor Don Anastasio behold on those youthful features! In a panic he realized certain vital things. To evade his debt to a government that could never claim it was very seductive and business-like. But there were the Confederate batteries on the wharf, and a line of torpedoes across the entrance to the bay. There were the Federal cannon of Fort Morgan, just beyond. His passenger, if rejected, had only to give the word, and there would be some right eager shooting. And as the Southerners shot, in their present mood, they would remember various matters. They would remember the treasure he 33had wrung from their distress; the cotton bought for ten cents and sold abroad for a dollar; the nitre, the gunpowder, the clothing and medicines, rated so mercilessly dear; the profits boosted a thousand per cent., though an army was starving.

And yet MurguÍa could not lift his soul from the few hundred dollars of passage money. He almost had his man by the sleeve again. But no, there were four hundred odd bales on board. There was La Luz, his fleet £20,000 Clyde-built side-wheeler, bought out of the proceeds of a single former trip. Even if torpedoes and cannon missed, the Fort and blockaders outside would be thankful for the alarm, and make sure of him. A few hundred dollars was an amount, but the benignity in Driscoll’s whimsical brown eyes meant a great deal more, such for instance, as cotton and steamer and Don Anastasio plunging to the bottom of the bay.

“Oh I s’y, sir,” interrupted a voice in vigorous cockney, “this ’ere tide ain’t in the ’abit o’ waitin’. If we go to-night, we go this minute, sir!” It was the skipper, and the skipper’s ultimatum.

“W’y yes,” drawled the lieutenant colonel, “let’s be marching. I forgot to tell you, I’m in a hurry. Come on, Demijohn,” and man and horse went in search of beds.

MurguÍa looked venomous, but the plank was drawn on board.