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 423before 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. 424“And when we stopped him, he begged hard to be brought to the Coronel Gringo, that is, to you, seÑor.”

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!”

MurguÍa 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 425will fight. It is arranged for–for daybreak, seÑores. 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.

“SeÑores, seÑores 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, seÑor? No, you do not know. Your general, seÑores–General Escobedo–has orders to–to raise the siege.”

“What?”

“Si seÑor, to raise the siege! The orders are from San Luis, from the SeÑor Presidente there. He–he thinks the siege has lasted long enough.”

426“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 RepÚblica 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 MurguÍa, “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! SeÑor, 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.

427“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.

MurguÍa 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!”

MurguÍa dropped to the nearest camp stool.

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

MurguÍa 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, seÑor, 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!”

MurguÍa darted at him a look of uneasy admiration.

428“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, seÑor?”

“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 seÑor, 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, seÑor, he thought Marquez was coming back with relief. There was that–that Frenchwoman you know of–who brought news from the 429capital. 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 QuerÉtaro 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, seÑor. 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,” MurguÍa 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 MurguÍa 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.

430MurguÍa 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 QuerÉtaro. 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.

MurguÍa 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? 431Lopez may be an open book, but you seem to’ve read me wrong. Prob’bly the language is foreign.”

MurguÍa’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, seÑor, 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,” MurguÍa 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, seÑor,” 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––”

432“SeÑor,” 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 seÑor, 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 MurguÍa’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!”

MurguÍa 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, MurguÍa 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 433suffer, 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 CÆsar. 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.