The Missourian Part 69

All swung round on one of their number. It was the parson himself who had p.r.o.nounced sentence.

Then they set out under the stars to attend to it.

CHAPTER XVII

UNDER A SPANISH CLOAK

"What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning's rest?"

--_Romeo and Juliet_.

Just within their own bivouac four Missourians waited with eight horses.

Driscoll and Boone, and the small limping shadow of Murguia between them, went on outside the sentry line toward the Alameda. When they returned, a stranger accompanied them, a little distance apart.

"It's true," Driscoll whispered to those who had staid. "The trenches are filled with townsmen. _He_ took me."

The Americans glanced once the stranger's way, and grunted. He was a large man, hidden to the eyes in a Spanish cloak. For all the charity of darkness, he seemed ill at ease, and held himself from them, a marked figure, alone. A leprosy in himself tainted his every thought. He would not willingly come near any man. He understood English, unhappily now for him, and Boone's warning as they mounted seared like vitriol. "Look out, Harry, don't touch the filthy skut! It'll take the rotting of death to clean your fingers." After that, even Murguia drew involuntarily away from the stranger.

They circled the town widely, having only Republican challenges to quiet, and they dismounted under the trees which shade the valley to the northeast, between the Sangremal, or mound of La Cruz, and the besiegers' range of hills. Here, under La Cruz's steep bluff, the Republican general-in-chief had his quarters, and here he kept a hawk's jealous watch on the walls above, where slept his country's invader.

Open battle is clear honor, so reckoned; but it takes a brave man to dive for a pearl in slime. Driscoll was the one to conduct Murguia and his gloomy companion into the presence of General Escobedo. When he rejoined the other five outside the tent, he was alone.

"Well, come on," he said as he mounted under the trees. "We needn't stay for the rest of it, thank G.o.d."

For a while they rode in silence back toward their camp. They pa.s.sed under the aqueduct and entered the open plain. Then the parson stretched out his hand to the pommel of Driscoll's saddle.

"Well?" he ventured softly.

"Well, Clem, it's done."

The others crowded their horses nearer.

"I want to tell you all," Driscoll abruptly began again. "I want to tell you that I've just seen the strangest thing of my whole life, right back there in that tent. I--well, it's simply flattened me out!"

"You mean Lopez, Din?" one asked tentatively.

"Lopez? No, no, there's nothing strange in him. Any low hound will sell out to save his hide. No, Dan, I mean the other. I mean the old man.

He's the one who used to run the blockade off Mobile, and a whiter-livered, more contemptible old grandmother I never hope to see anywhere, no, never! Yet not a month ago, the day of that Cimatario scrimmage, I found him on the battlefield, and he had been wounded. But he didn't seem to know it. He didn't even seem to know that the sh.e.l.ls were still banging all around him."

"An _old_ coward, too!" someone muttered.

"But wait. He used to be one thing worse, one thing more, than a coward.

He was a miser, and such a miser that he _made_ himself face danger. You should have seen him running a blockade, with the Yankees chasing behind. He trembled--I tell you, he trembled like a withered cottonwood leaf on a broken stem. Yet he whined against stoking with turpentine, because it cost a little more. I'd 'a' thought, I did then, that the miser was in his bones until the last trumpet. But to-night, back in that tent just now----"

"Well?"

"Well, he _refused_ money! He refused _gold_! He didn't seem to know what it was, any more than he did bullets a month ago. Escobedo asked him his price, and shoved a glittering heap across the table at him. You saw how he acted when we offered him something to eat? Well, he looked the same way at the gold. He acted impatient. He didn't want to see anything except Lopez. But you'd have called it a miser's eagerness, the way he watched that Lopez. Only a miser don't exult when it's someone else who pockets the money."

"Maybe they'll divide?"

"Not much, because Murgie could have had his share over and above. No, it wasn't that. It wasn't the gold. He was greedy--for a soul! He wanted to see Lopez _bought_, and no hitch. And when it was done, he wet those catfish lips of his with his tongue. I believe the devil in h.e.l.l must look just that way when he gets some poor sinner. But to think of that old skinflint, to think of that old feeble cowardly shark not _knowing_ danger, not _knowing_ money----"

"Come, Din," the parson's blessed, cheery voice interrupted, "let's hurry back and wash our hands. Then we'll _all_ feel better."

While the six Americans rode gloomily away from what they had done, and from their own thoughts as they best could, a stealthy company was forming under the trees among the tents of the Republican general. After a time the seeming spectres began to move in unison, an undulating wave that spread as the grayish shadow of a low hanging cloud. The dim figures slowly swept the little s.p.a.ce of valley, on toward the steep slope of La Cruz, and soon they were climbing, silently creeping, nearer and nearer the dark walls above.

Two seemed the leaders, and the third limped close behind. But one of the first two held a pistol ever near the heart of his companion, who was wrapped to the eyes in a Spanish cloak.

"Who goes----" cried an Imperialist sentry.

"Your colonel, fool!" he of the cloak stopped him short. "I, Miguel Lopez. I am changing the guard. Return now to your barracks and get what sleep you can before morning. One of these men with me will take your place."

In like manner each later challenge was satisfied, and so on to a cannon-battered crevice in the wall. The spectres pa.s.sed through the gap there into a field of graves on the mound's level summit. The earth had an uncanny softness under their tread. The plots were mostly fresh, of slain Imperialists still keeping their rank according to battalion. But the living, the Reserve Brigade, were here as well, sleeping over the dead. They stirred and grumbled at being disturbed, but thought then no more of the intruders. The secret plans for the daybreak attack explained everything. Their colonel, whose voice they knew, was shifting forces in preparation. But when the dawn came, they awoke to find their weapons gone, and themselves defenseless prisoners.

Many of the spectral troop fell away to hold the cemetery, but the rest kept on, and entered the monastery garden. Here there was a battery of one gun, whose muzzle pointed the way to the Republican camp. Without a sound the Imperialist gunners were replaced by Republicans. The cannon was one captured during the Cimatario fight. It was called "La Tempestad," and bore an inscription, "The Last Argument of Nations." Its new possessors turned the muzzle squarely on the monastery, not fifty yards away, where Maximilian lay then asleep.

The shadowy host did not linger in the monastery itself. They swept through hastily, in at the garden entrance, along the corridor, and out by the great portico door upon La Cruz Plaza. They had pa.s.sed the citadel. The town lay before them. But in the Plaza were more cannon, which had been taken from the trenches and ma.s.sed for the supreme effort. They lay silent, under the silent bells of the church. They lay under the giant Cross of the Apparition, which was adorned by the Inditos with garlands in vague memory of pagan rites on that very spot.

They lay under the splendid Arabian palms. They lay among defenders. To take them was like prowling with a torch among broken casks of gunpowder. Not a shot must be fired until the thing was done. Otherwise, a quick second shot was to find the heart of Lopez. So Lopez was exceedingly cautious. However, he commanded here. He was the Emperor's favorite. Squad after squad, the drowsy Imperialists moved off, letting the strangers relieve them. So the critical work was achieved, even as day appeared over the eastern hills. Then he who had kept so close to Lopez put his revolver away.

"Your bargain is fulfilled, senor," he said. "Accordingly, here's the paper I was to give you. It is your safe conduct throughout the Republic. You are free. Go!"

Lopez clutched the thing that meant his life, but as his fingers tightened over it, his first greed vanished. He stared about him uncertainly. The Plaza swarmed with men. They were the gray battalion he had led there. In the dawning light they were still gray. They were the Supremos Poderes de la Republica. De la Republica? Yes, of the enemy, and he had brought them. But it was as though he had just awakened, and found them there. The enemy? The enemy was in La Cruz! With a sharp cry, he turned and ran back into the monastery. He brushed aside the hateful gray uniforms. He ran panting up the stone steps. In the dark hall above he stopped at a cell door, and pounded, and tugged frantically at its latch.

"Senor, awake! Hurry! We are betrayed! Hurry! Escape--escape----"

Within came a startled sleepy voice, "What, what's--" which changed at once to reproving dignity. "Can it be?--Lopez!"

"But senor--sire--the Chinacos, the Republicans, they are here already!"

"Colonel Lopez!" In its shocked surprise the voice was edged with rebuke. "Man, man, where are your years of training near my person? One would think you some boorish night-watchman."

Lopez outside the door dropped his hands, and fell abjectedly silent, as servilely abashed in his lapse of etiquette as though he stood the traitor unmasked.

"Now then, Miguel," spoke the Emperor more kindly, "go to General Mejia and the others. Let them have the goodness to attend me here."

Lopez turned on down the corridor, stopped at the doors of Generals Mejia and Castillo, and the Prince Salm-Salm. At each he tapped lightly, as one dazed, and announced that the enemy surrounded them. Then, remembering, he fled.

Within the thick walls that narrowed his state into a friar's cell, Maximilian rose from his iron couch. "So," he sighed, almost in relief, "Destiny means it to end in this way." He was calm, and he attired himself carefully. He chose his general's uniform, with its rich dark blue, and scarlet cordon. Nor did he forget the star of some royal order, which to common men seemed a cotillion favor. When he should step forth that morning, it was to play a world role. The prince must be serene in the moment of trial. The nations must know that Destiny had him in hand. And musing thus, he parted his golden beard with dainty precision. Within a month Europe would acclaim him reverently. He noted that his high boots glistened. Mejia and the other two, hurrying to him, fell back in admiration to behold how placid he was.

"Gentlemen," said he, "to leave here, or die! There's nothing else."

He noticed a soft heap at the door, and picked it up.

"Lopez's cloak, a disguise!" he exclaimed. "G.o.d bless the poor fellow, he left it for me."