The Missourian Part 45

eloin protested that he understood.

"None," repeated the Emperor, "except to win back my confidence. When you have taken leave of Her Majesty, you may come to my cabinet to bid me farewell."

As Maximilian left them, Charlotte turned on the favorite. "Indeed, Monsieur eloin?" she said in utter scorn.

"But, Your Majesty----"

"Is Napoleon, then, so liberal a paymaster?"

"Your Majesty!" and in genuine distress the courtier hurried on. "If you would listen, Madame! 'Tis true that Jeanne d'Aumerle has found the surest lever to pry His Highness out of Mexico----"

"So good a lever, that you would use it too, to topple over my throne."

"Not so, Madame. It's a cunning lever, yes; but _I_ shall use another fulcrum."

"Really, monsieur, if I were in the mood for riddles and such pretty trifles, I'd ask you to favor Us with a chansonnette."

"But this is as plain as day. First, our little intrigante knows that if His Majesty tries for the Austrian throne, he must leave Mexico.

_That_ is her lever to move him. But suppose we shift it to my fulcrum. Then, whatever encourages his hopes for Austria, will make him but the more determined to cling to Mexico. For to succeed in Austria, he must triumph first in Mexico. He must prove to Europe that he can reign brilliantly. But if he abandons Mexico, as Jacqueline would persuade him, what of his prestige then? What of his glory to dazzle the Austrians? If Your Majesty would suggest to him this phase----"

"And you, meanwhile in Europe?"

"Oh, I shall find his chances good over there, but conditional on his success here."

"Monsieur eloin, I find that I must congratulate you. More, I even regret that you are going, for I dread that some other will replace you in favor with the Emperor who----"

"Who may not be in accord with our views, Your Majesty would say? But if you will permit, Madame, I believe I know quite a different man.

Moreover, he has already made an impression on His Highness, during our brief stay at an hacienda in the Huasteca. Now he is here. I brought him to commend as a future loyal follower."

"Pray, who is the paragon?"

"A priest, Madame, a German priest, who perhaps would not refuse the Bishopric of Durango. The hope of that rich see would insure his devotion. His name is Fischer. He is a clerical, he is an imperialist, he is resourceful. Our Jacqueline will have much to do to outwit him.

This corpulent padre, Madame, would wheedle the sulky pope himself into a good humor with us. If I might venture so far as to present him before----"

"Oh, I suppose so," said Charlotte wearily.

PART SECOND

THE ROSE THAT WAS A THORN IN THE LAND OF ROSES

"The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born."

--Emerson.

CHAPTER I

MEAGRE SHANKS

"... and should a man full of talk be justified?"--_Book of Job_.

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 circ.u.mstances, 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 old 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. .h.i.therto 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:

"Popo, out there, grand, towering, whose frosty nose sniffs the vault of heaven, whose mantle of fleecy cloud wraps him as the h.o.a.ry 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 pa.s.sed 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. s.h.a.ggy 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 doing 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 Tec.u.mseh, 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 whole 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!"