Eugene P. Lyle

“Then John bent up his long bende-bowe,
And fetteled him to shoote.”

–Robin Hood.

Into the crowd before the cafÉ, the Storm Centre pushed the argument of shoulders, and quickly gained for himself the place which his pseudonym indicated. Then he stopped, and looked puzzled. Which side to take? The French, being outnumbered, offered the larger contract.

“What’s the row?” Driscoll inquired of Ney. But he was ignored. “Might answer,” he suggested insidiously, “for it’s only a toss-up anyhow which way I enlist. Look here, Sky-Blue, if you don’t understand Spanish, just say so, and tell me why you don’t start the game.”

Ney shoved him aside impatiently, but he calmly stepped back again.

“Come now,” he argued plaintively, “let me in, don’t be selfish? But–goodness gracious, man, why don’t you draw your gun?”

“Because, my good fellow, I haven’t any.”

The mystery cleared at once, for now Driscoll understood the strategic outlay. Its key was Fra Diavolo, with a pistol at Ney’s head, and quite statuesque the romantic Mexican looked. But out of the tail of his eye Fra Diavolo noted the American, at first with contemptuous amusement only. Then, as though such had been the situation from the start, he grew aware of an ugly black muzzle under his chin. For very safety 46he froze rigid, and dared not turn his own weapon from Ney to his new aggressor. But he wondered how the ugly black muzzle came there. He had not seen the American move. But for those who did see, the action seemed deliberate, with no hint of the actual panther-like turn of the wrist from the waist outward.

With his left hand Driscoll next drew forth the second of the brace, and held it out to Ney in his palm. The Chasseur seized the weapon joyfully. He straightened as the humiliation of a disarmed soldier fell from him. But at once his face clouded, and with an oath he handed back the navy-six.

“W’y, what’s the matter?” asked Driscoll.

“You are trifling, man. That thing has no trigger.”

Much as an artisan would explain the peculiarities of a favorite tool, Driscoll said, “Now look here, you strip it–this way–so.”

And as he explained, he illustrated. He raised the hammer under his thumb, he released it on the cartridge, and Fra Diavolo’s sombrero flew off.

Fra Diavolo threw up his hand involuntarily, and there was a second report. Fra Diavolo’s pistol twisted out of his grasp. The brace of navies had not gone higher than the American’s waist.

“So,” Driscoll concluded.

At the same moment one of the sailors, a bullet-headed lad of Normandy, was observed to do a very peculiar thing. Jumping in front of Fra Diavolo he drew up one knee, for all the world like a dancer who meant then and there to cut a pigeon’s wing. His foot described a circle under the knee, then the performer turned partly round, and as a lightning bolt his leg straightened out full against Fra Diavolo’s stomach. The ranchero dropped like a bag of sand, except that he groaned. Ney captured the fallen pistol. A musket blazed, and a sailor cursed. And forthwith the maelstrom began. It went swirling 47round, with weird contortions and murderous eddies, but always its seething vortex was the lone trooper.

Luckily, firearms were out of the question where both sides were so mixed together. But Mexicans and sailors plied their knives instead, so that there was much soppy red spreading over the yellowish white of shirts, and over the blue of jackets. The pigeon-wing diversion, called the savate, also played its bizarre rÔle, for wherever a Frenchman found space for the straightening out of a leg, in that instant a little native shot from him as a cat from the toe of a boot. Fra Diavolo was deposited flat on his back each time he tried to rise, till the sole of a foot took on more terror than a cannon’s mouth. As for Michel Ney, he was beautiful and gallant, now that what he had to do came without thinking. He achieved things splendidly with the butt of his enemy’s revolver, and exhorted his men the while to the old, brilliant daring of Frenchmen.

The Storm Centre, though, was merely workmanlike. He put away the six-shooters, and strove barehanded with joy and vigor, which was delightful; yet so systematic, that it was anything rather than romance. It might have been geometry, in that a foe is safer horizontal than perpendicular, and the theorem he applied industriously, with simple faith and earnest fists.

Yet, all told, it was a highly successful affair. Din Driscoll objected to the brevity, but that could hardly be altered for his sake. The little demons of Mexicans crawled from the outskirts of the mess, here one, there two or three, and now many, limping and nursing heads, and rubbing themselves dubiously, with hideous grimaces.

Suddenly the cafÉ door opened, and Jacqueline emerged, tripping lightly. Din Driscoll was filling his cob pipe, but he paused with a finger over the bowl. “If there isn’t a woman in it!” he muttered. He felt imposed upon. The game was a man’s game, and now its flavor was gone.

48Jacqueline had seen nothing of the fray, but now she saw Fra Diavolo’s Contra Guerrillas skulking away and the sardonic captain himself fuming in ignoble soreness on his back. “Indeed,” with fine scorn she demanded of Ney, “and how did you manage it?”

“Looks like the wrong side won out,” mused Driscoll, feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Permit me to congratulate you–sergeant,” she went on. “It’s a good beginning for promotion. If you only knew how hard Maximilian tries to win over these natives, and here the very first thing you–HÉlas! poor Prince Max!”

Driscoll caught one word from her French. “What’s that about Maximilian?” he interrupted. He had to repeat, and then Jacqueline only glanced at him over her shoulder. Some mule driver, she imagined, and turned again to the abashed Chasseur.

But the pseudo mule driver moved squarely in front of her. He was embarrassed and respectful, but determined. Jacqueline lifted her brows. “My good man, this is effrontery!” But her good man did not quail. She noticed him a little then. He was ruddy and clean, with a stubble growth on his jaw. Since the civilization of Mobile, Lieutenant Colonel Jno. D. Driscoll had backslided into his old campaign ease. His first genuine stiff beard had found him sabre in hand, so that his knowledge of cutting instruments and of arched brows was limited. He said that he would be much obliged to have his question answered. Whereat Jacqueline thought, by her faith, “What a round, wholesome voice these rustics sometimes have!” The one she heard possessed the full rich quality of an Irishman’s brogue, with the brogue worn off.

“You know Spanish, do you not, seÑorita?”

“Mais–why, better than I thought,” she returned in English; and in English that was piquant because it could not 49help being just the least bit French as well. “Much better–because, I comprehend even yours, sir.”

“Con-grat-ulate you,” Driscoll returned. “But what’s this about Maximilian?”

An eagerness in his manner caught her attention. But she answered with her old irony. “His Imperial Majesty seems to concern you profoundly, monsieur?”

“H’m’m–oh no! Only it’s curious how he gets mixed up in this shindy of ours.”

“If–if you are asking about Maximilian, seÑor,” a heavy voice began. Fra Diavolo at least was not indifferent to the American’s questioning, and now he explained that the lady was the Marquesa d’Aumerle, and that she was on her way from Paris to the Mexican court. But a storm having brought her to Tampico, she wished to finish her journey overland. He, the Capitan Morel of His Majesty’s Contra Guerrillas, had offered her escort for the trip. But the French caballero had presumed to force her to continue by water.

“By water?” Driscoll repeated, glaring at Ney. “That poor little girl!–And make her sick again!”

Jacqueline’s chin tilted. “Ma foi, monsieur, I was not sick.”

Driscoll noted her fragile dainty person, and recalling his own experience, had grave doubts about the consistency of Nature. But this was apart. There was still the mystery of his having blundered into a business that somehow concerned the Emperor of Mexico. And it was a matter that must be set right.

“You say you are an officer,” he demanded of the ranchero, “but your Greaser clothes, that’s not a uniform?”

Uniforms were not necessarily a part of the contra-guerrilla service, said the Mexican; and besides, there might be reasons for a disguise. But as to his own identity, he reproduced the order signed by Colonel Dupin.

“Correct,” said Driscoll, and handed back the paper.

50“Now then,” he added to Ney, “what do you say for yourself?”

Unconsciously the French soldier replied as to a superior officer. “I’ve just been transferred to the service of His Excellency, Marshal Bazaine, in the City of Mexico, and am on my way there now.”

“You are in the French service?”

“Of course I am.”

“Your rank?”

“Sergeant.”

Here, in a caprice of kind heart, as well as of mischief, Jacqueline interposed. “Your sergeant, Monsieur the American, is the Duke of Elchingen.” But she might have called Ney a genus homo, for all the impression it made.

“Too bad, sergeant,” said Driscoll, “but a captain ranks first, you know, and–well, I reckon I’ll have to change sides. I know it’s tough,” and his brow knitted with droll perplexity, “but I’m afraid we’ll just have to do this thing all over again, unless–well, unless you give in, sergeant.”

Jacqueline had been waxing more and more agog, and her boot had tapped impatiently. Now she gave way, and declared that it was too much. What, she demanded, had monsieur to do with the matter in the first place? Driscoll took off his slouch hat and ran his fingers through his hair to grope for an answer. It had never been brought to him before that fighting might be a private preserve. But his face cleared straightway. In this second skirmish, due momentarily, he would be a legitimate belligerent and not a trespasser, because since he had stumbled amuck of Maximilian’s authority, another joust was needed to correct the first. It all depended on whether Miss–Miss–if the seÑorita–still wished to go by land.

“If monsieur will have the condescension,” returned Jacqueline.

51Then out came the brace of navies once more, as naturally as the order book of the grocer’s clerk on your back porch. Involuntarily Ney reached for his cap.

“Now captain,” said Driscoll.

Fra Diavolo took the cue instantly. “A-i, mis muchachos!” he called, and the little demons came hurrying back, like a damned host with a new hope of heaven.

If there were any police about, or had been, they were mysteriously indifferent. But Jacqueline did just as well. No one had thought to put her back in the cafÉ, and she promptly took a hand in the man’s game.

“Michel Ney,” she commanded, “do you hear me; lower that pistol!”

“You, you wish me to surrender, mademoiselle?”

“You know I don’t! If anyone even asks it, I will go back to the ship with you, at once.”

“But I, I don’t understand.”

“You understand that I want your escort overland. Is it gallant, then, to disappoint me by getting yourself killed?”

“But all your trunks are on the ship.”

Jacqueline turned to her Fra Diavolo. He could answer that? To be sure he could, and he was honored. He suggested, with her permission, that she spend the night on shore, she and her maid, since the cafÉ was also a hotel. Meantime, the sailors could bring what she needed from the boat.

As he listened, Ney’s slow thoughts came to a focus. And when Jacqueline turned to him again, he gave way graciously, which brought on him a sharp scrutiny from the ranchero. However, the truce between the two antagonists was patched up with a readiness on both sides. Ney restored to Fra Diavolo his pistol, and had his own weapons back in exchange. Next he took the ship’s steward aside, apparently to instruct him about bringing the trunk. “And steward,” he whispered, “don’t forget to make it urgent. The skipper must land all 52the troops on board at once.” He decided that meantime he would stroll up to the fort on his own account, and bring down more aid from there.

“Now then,” reflected the beaming young Gaul, “our spirituelle little marquise will find that one may have wits, and not read her dense old poets, either.”

He opened the cafÉ door for her and both joined the maid Berthe, who was still clinging to sanctuary inside.

The American lieutenant-colonel and the Mexican capitan looked at one another. They felt deserted. Fra Diavolo’s teeth bared. “Ai, que mal educados,” he observed. “They’re ill-bred, I say. They kick a gentleman in the stomach–in the stomach, seÑor!”

Driscoll turned to go. It was enough of satisfaction to reflect that, if any mention of the affair reached Maximilian, his own part therein would not injure his errand to Mexico. As for the rest, Mexicans and French could go their own ways–he had amused himself. “Well, adios, captain,” he said, and swung on his heel.

“Wait! Which direction, seÑor?”

“To this mesÓn here, around the corner.”

“If Your Mercy is not in a hurry––”

Driscoll nodded, and the capitan stopped to say a few words to two of his vagabonds. One of these immediately hurried off in the direction of the river. The other was still loafing outside the cafÉ when his chief rejoined Driscoll.

“Looks like you were interested in His Resplendent Majesty,” Fra Diavolo began with weighty lightsomeness. “Mustn’t hurt his feelings, eh, caballero?”

Driscoll laughed easily, “It was all on the girl’s account,” he said.

The ranchero glanced at him quickly, sideways, a dark look of suspicion. “On her account, seÑor, not Maximilian’s?” he repeated. “Dios mio, caballero, I’ll wager you have forgotten 53her already.” Which, to tell the truth, was fairly exact.

At the mesÓn Don Anastasio regarded the American with much more respect to see him returning in such company. But to Fra Diavolo he addressed himself in his thin obsequious voice, “You see I am waiting, as you wished. But on my, my daughter’s account, I––”

“So, captain,” Driscoll interrupted, “you’re the one that’s holding back Murgie! Just tell him, Murgie, that I am in a rush.”

Fra Diavolo smiled and bade his American have patience, for he quite believed that the SeÑor MurguÍa would be starting in the morning.

“Si seÑor,” he went on in a different tone, when Driscoll had left him alone with the trader, “you set out to-morrow, and you are to have two extra horses ready. But for whom, do you suppose? Bien, they are for La SeÑorita Jacqueline and her maid.”

MurguÍa’s countenance changed strangely, a most inexplicable contortion. His little rat eyes focused on the ranchero, and he drew back in a sort of fear. Convoy her whom people called Jacqueline through the lawless Huasteca, at the bidding of this man! “No, no, no!” he cried, and shuddered too.

Trying to read a meaning behind the capitan’s dark scowl, he knew only too well the meaning that was there. He moaned at the thought. Maximiliano would have him shot, or burned, or tortured. He would lose his ranch, his cotton mill. He would be poor. It was vague, what would happen, but it was horrible, horrible!

“Hush, you fool!” growled Fra Diavolo. “The entire mesÓn will hear you, including that Gringo.”

“That Gringo? He, he is one of your friends?”

“Friend! For Dios, he nearly ruined my little plans for 54Jacqueline. Listen, he has business of some kind with Maximiliano.”

“Yes, yes. And there’s a–a mystery in his business.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I knew, would it be a mystery?”

“Who is he?”

“He won’t tell. I only know that he is a Confederate officer.”

“A Confederate officer?” The capitan whistled low and softly. “Come to the Plaza, there you can tell me what you think.”

And in the solitude of the Plaza they planned according to their suspicions.