"Shanks, will you stay here with six men----"

"Jack Driscoll!"

"To watch that coach, Dan. There's two girls in it."

"Jack! Miss that there fight!"

"But Dan, _these_ girls are friends of yours, you met them once."

Mr. Boone started violently.

"Never mind, I'll ask Rube Marmaduke or the Parson."

A pitiful struggle racked Mr. Boone.

"You, you're not fooling me, Din?" he pleaded.

"Sure not. It's your empress all right. It's Miss Burt all right."

"Then, Lawd help me, I'll stay!--But you'd best be hustling and get to work."

"Just a minute, Shanks, there's the other one in the coach. She wants to go to Queretero. If she gives her word of honor--never mind, she knows honor from a man's standpoint--if she gives her word that she brings nothing that will help 'em inside, then you can escort the coach into the town after things quiet down some. All right? Good. Then we're off!"

Demijohn's hoofs pelted dust b.a.l.l.s with each impact. The Grays were ready. They surged behind. The sound of them was a swishing roar. In the apex of the blinding tempest, Driscoll sat his saddle as unmoved as an engineer in his cab. He looked ahead placidly. Empire and a prince had just triumphed. So he was going to readjust fatality. The smile touched his lips as it never had before, and hovered there in the midst of battle.

CHAPTER XIV

BLOOD AND NOISE--WHAT ELSE?

"On stubborn foes he vengeance wreak'd, And laid about him like a Tartar, But if for mercy once they squeak'd, He was the first to grant them quarter."

--Orlando Furioso.

Only for the moment of a cooling breath is Nature gray in Mexico. The sun's barbed shafts had already ripped away the cloak of dawn when Driscoll and his cavaliers swept over the glaring road. But there was no longer any battle. The plain swarmed confusion only. Panic cringed before hunger. The defeated besiegers panted, stumbled, ran on again, or lay still in trembling. The victorious besieged were gorging from fingers crammed full. It was the hour for trophies. A prosperous townsman bore a stack of tortillas, and gloated leeringly as he hurried to put his treasure safely away. A dashing Hungarian with fur pelisse shouted gallant oaths at a yoke of oxen and prodded them with his curved sword, as though a creaking cart filled with corn were the precious loot of an Attila. Pueblo and soldiery tore ravenously at fortifications that had so long kept them from one savory broth. With nails alone they would demolish walls and trenches. Some lurched over fugitives in the gra.s.s, and then pinned them there with bayonets, the l.u.s.t for food turning fiendishly to a l.u.s.t for blood.

But what most inflamed the Grays were the captured cannon. They counted as many as twenty being dragged into the Imperialist lines. The Missourians were aggrieved. Never, never had Joe Shelby's brigade ever lost a gun. And as they galloped, they looked anxiously about for chances of more battle. Just then Rodrigo's outlaw band caught their eye. These had swerved from the road out upon the field, hot to engage anything, everything. A long provision train offered first. Many carts had been loaded with Republican stores, and were being convoyed to the town by a squadron of Imperialist cavalry. It was the clash between this escort and the brigands that attracted the Grays coming on behind. But the escort wheeled and fled and the brigands pursued, slashing with machetes, and so charged full tilt into the Dragoons of the Empress who were sent to retake the abandoned prize. Red tunics mixed with ragged yellow shirts, and war-chargers and mustangs swirled together as a maelstrom. Then the Grays pounded among them, in each hand of each man a six-shooter. The red spots began to fall out of the peppered caldron.

The red tunics that were left broke, retreated, ran. It became a rout.

Only a few of the Empire's best survived those ten minutes of blood-letting. Fatality? Driscoll's lip curled. Fatality? The Dragoons, now no more, had twice held him for their bullets.

Grays and brigands chased them back toward Queretero. The fleeing remnant began yelling for help. Driscoll rose in his stirrups, and saw just ahead a large force of the enemy. It was gathered around the Casa Blanca, a little house on the plain. The large Imperialist force there was an army, nothing less, though still disordered from the late action and victory. Surrounded by a brilliant staff was a tall, golden bearded chieftain, sumptuously arrayed as a general of division, regally mounted on a cream-coated horse of Spain. He was Maximilian, viewing from there the winning of his empire. The army behind him filled his ears--"Viva Su Majestad!"

But he who had given the cue for that thrilling music now saw the convoy's fate. He rode up and down anxiously, striving for order in the confused ranks. He wore the green sash of a general. He had a moustache and imperial, searching black eyes, and an open brow. His fine features showed in the blend of French and Castilian blood. He was the real chieftain. He was Miramon. Impetuously he made ready to avenge the Dragoons.

These things that he saw ahead brought Driscoll to his senses. With reluctance, but instantly, he made up his mind. He held high his sabre and halted his own men, turning at the same time to collide obliquely, and purposely, against Rodrigo.

"Not that way, Rod, not that way!"

"But it's the tyrant! It's the tyrant!"

Driscoll got the brigand's bridle and swung him around fiercely. "Let the poor tyrant be!" he yelled. "We've got to take that there Cimatario hill."

A moment later Grays and brigands wheeled to the right and were off.

Back at the Casa Blanca Maximilian lowered his gla.s.ses. "They surely, they surely are not--yes," he cried, "they _are_ going to attack the Cimatario!"

Miramon smiled. "Then they are lunatics," he said. "Why, Your Highness knows that we have five thousand of our best men on the Cimatario."

"Yes," Maximilian agreed uneasily, "but I thought I recognized the man who leads those lunatics. Do you happen to know, general, how Tampico fell?"

"Do not worry, sire," Miramon replied, willing to humor the prince, "I will take our infantry to the Alameda and strengthen our reserve there, should anything really happen."

Across the gra.s.sy plain raced the twelve hundred cavalry and the two hundred outlaws. They raced to attack five thousand brave men who had that morning dislodged ten thousand. Five thousand in the trenches above, fourteen hundred in the open below, such were the odds of Empire against Republic.

Grays and brigands drew rein under the Cimatario's west slope, and the bugle sounded to dismount.

"But senor," Rodrigo protested, "don't we charge straight up?"

"And not have a man left when we do get up? Here Clem," Driscoll added to Old Brothers and Sisters, the lieutenant colonel of the Grays, "you circle round and up the other side with eight companies. Take all the horses, but leave 'em back of the hill as you go. Don't that look like the best scheme?"

The parson's cherubic features beamed. "Good-bye, Din," he said. "But pshaw, I reckon--I reckon we'll be meeting up above." He referred, however, to the top of the Cimatario.

Four companies and Rodrigo's band remained. These Driscoll spread out in a skirmish line that made a long beaded chain around their side of the hill. It was evidently an unfamiliar method, for the Imperialist tiradores fired down on them contemptuously. But each time, while the enemy above were reloading, the Grays and outlaws below were climbing a few yards, each man of them individually, up from behind his own particular rock. The Imperialists, it now appeared, had blundered incomprehensibly, since they had actually taken away nearly all the cannon captured on the Cimatario. But six-pound affairs from batteries in the Alameda soon began to splinter and furrow around the climbing men. One loosened boulder rolled and struck Doc Clayburn on the tip of the shoulder, bringing him down like a bag of meal. He arose, feeling himself. "Now, by the Great and Unterrified Continental----" he began, as he always did at the monotony of being hit. Then his disgust changed to wonder. "W'y," he cried, "I'm not either, I only thought I was!"

They mounted higher, and the business grew hotter. Each man had to look to himself more and more sharply, lest he forget that economy of the individual was now the hope of the regiment. But for all that, when a Missourian craved tobacco--it is a craving not to be denied, in no matter what danger, as most any fireman knows--he would leave cover to beg his nearest neighbor for a chew, and obtaining it, would feel the heart put back into him.

As they drew close under the first of the trenches, they concentrated for a bit of sharp in-fighting, and so suffered more. But once they provoked the next volley, they meant to rush the works. The Imperialists though were loath to squander the one ball to a carbine when Indian-like fighters like these were so near. They had one mountain piece, a bra.s.s howitzer, and the gunner stood ready, the lanyard in his hand. But he hesitated, bewildered. His targets were not twenty paces below, yet nowhere crouching behind the rocks were the foe ma.s.sed together. His pride forbade that he waste twelve pounds of death on a single man.

But suddenly that happened which the gunner never in this life explained. Poised expectant in the lull of the fray, he was trembling under the tense silence, when he saw the impetuous Don Rodrigo dart up the slope, full against the muzzle. At the same instant he heard shouts of warning behind him, and he heard the tiradores there above firing at someone almost at his feet. But the figure that had scaled up the back of the hill, crawling around the trench, was already on him. He drew back his arm to drive the heavy shot through Don Rodrigo in front, but only to feel the cord in his hand part before a knife's keen edge. With a cry of dismay he sprang to grasp the rope's end, but as in a vision a head of curly black and an odd smile rose between, and a swinging fist of a great bared arm crashed back his chin, and he sank as a brained ox.

"Lambaste 'em, Din Driscoll!"

It was a rapturous shout, and Cal Grinders, pa.s.sing Rodrigo, tumbled over the earth-heap and joined his colonel against five hundred. Behind swarmed others into the newly awakened h.e.l.l, coatless men of Saxon necks tanned a dark ruby, and in the hot Imperialist fire they settled to their work.

"By cracken, lambaste 'em! Why in all h.e.l.l _don't_ ye lambaste 'em?"

This fury boiled through oaths, unable to spend itself in blows. The tigerish rage seized on them every one. Teeth grated vengefully as men struck.

"Lambaste 'em, Din Driscoll!"

"Lambaste 'em--_good_--Din Driscoll!"

The yell swelled to a murderous chorus. These men did not know that they were raving. A war cry is just the natural vent. It is simply the whole pack in full cry.

But never before--for now around him there was the contrast of hate and panting and pa.s.sions 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.