The Missourian

by Eugene P. Lyle

  CHAPTER VII

  A CROP OF COLONELS

  "And thus they led a quiet life During their princely raine." --_Ballad of King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid._

  Some years after the events recorded here, there appeared in theBoonville Javelin (post-bellum and revived) a serial of reminiscences,which, behind an opalescent gossamer of romance, pictured theMissourians and the chivalrous role they played around that forlornlychastened and be-chased damsel, la Republica Mexicana.

  Quite aside from the prodigious deeds set forth therein, thejournalistic epic is of itself naively prodigious, as anyone knowing Mr.Boone with pen in hand will at once suspect. All the little Trojanband--call them Gascons if you will, but own that if they boasted theywere ever keen to substantiate the bluff--all of them, then, strove andblazed away invariably as heroes and were just as peerless as could be.You wouldn't look for anything else from Mr. Boone. He must, however, becredited with one peculiarity, that he never hinted at himself as one ofthe glorious company. Daniel knew his newspaper ethics. He knew that thenewspaper man is _not_ the story, however they may regard it inFrance, for instance, where the reporter is ever the bright particularcynosure of any interview that bears his signature.

  A few strokes of the Meagre Shanks brush in the way of excerpts from hisnarrative, with plenty of extenuating dots in between, should make animpression, even though impressionistic, and serve perhaps as a sketchof what befell after Din Driscoll had bearded the Tiger, freed DonRodrigo, and surrendered his own two captives. To begin:

  A retreat was had [Daniel always got under way slowly, as thoughfore-resolved not to stampede.] Echo demands, "Retreat?--The IronBrigade in retreat?" 'Twas true. Rallied once again, but under anotherflag than the Bars, the Missourians rode all that dank, wet night lestthey meet and have to fight their new friends, the guerrillas underRodrigo Galan. It was a weird predicament. Two days before, they werepeaceful settlers in the land--_omne solum forti patria_--theirblood-flecked swords as ploughshares fleshed in earth's warm bosom....But tyrannical confiscation of the soil they tilled loomedforeboding.... Pestered nigh unto forceful phrases with shooing robbersof both sides out of their melon patches, and fired at last by thesentiment that it behooved them to sally forth and regulate thingsthemselves.... They only lacked a Cincinnatus. Their old general wouldnot lead them. Wearing his bright chaplet of renown, Joe Shelby nowdrove mules, a captain over long wagon trains....

  Then gallant Din Driscoll appeared among them, the dry-humored, recklessJack Driscoll of other days, attired now in the brave, dashingregimentals of the Republic[!] From out the wilds of distant Michoacanhe came with the long gallop that never would tire, and pausing at cabinafter cabin in the Colony's broad acres, summoned his old comrades toarms ... to arms against the invader.... Who, now, will argue bucoliccontent? Those lusty young planters smelled the battle from afar. Whatnow were waving tassels to the glory of deeds?--_a cuspidecorona_--to a wreath of powder-burned laurel? That very day the IronBrigade rallied again, gathered once again at the oft remembered bugle'sfull, resonant blare.

  Fighting came sooner than the Missourians hoped. Even as they startedfor Michoacan, a ragged Indito, whose village had been razed by theCossacks, met the command and asked for the Senor Coronel Gringo.Driscoll heard what he had to tell, and was greatly concerned, thoughthe others laughed at first and scoffed. For it seemed that the Inditodid not know who sent him, except that it was a senor chaparrito, ashort little senor. "Then you must be a Shorter Yet?" said Driscoll."Well, what do you bring?" The Indito produced from his ragged shirt abit of parchment, whereon Colonel Driscoll was urged to join with hisnew recruits in an attack on Maximilian's escort, for Maximilian was onhis way to Vera Cruz. The parchment was signed, "El Chaparrito."

  "Shorty! That word means 'Shorty'," the troopers guffawed. But Driscollshowed them another handwriting at the bottom. The parchment had beencountersigned in blank, thus: "Benito Juarez, Libertad y Reforma." TheMissourians were respectful after that. Many thought that the mysteriousguardian angel of the Republic's battles must be the Presidente himself,though the Presidente was thousands of miles away.

  * * * * *

  After the victory won against Dupin's Contra Guerrillas [so thechronicle goes on], the Missourians found their ally to be none otherthan that picturesque buccaneer of the Sierras, Don Rodrigo, wild as aprairie wolf, handsome as Lucifer; and their captives to be not theEmperor and suite but two beautiful women....

  When the prisoners had been exchanged--i. e., the two fair girlsrestored to Dupin, and Rodrigo freed--and Rodrigo had hurried away togather his scattered vagabonds from among the foothills, the Missouriansrealized their predicament. That day they had fought the Empire. Thenthey had turned and fought the Republic in the person of the guerrillachief, Rodrigo Galan. They had rebelled against the rebels, so weredoubly rebel, doubly outlawed. Ye gods, it _was_ bizarre! And asmorning dawned on them trailing along a dreary inferno gorge of theSierra Gorda, they blinked at each other ruefully. Poor waifs, they hadlost their native country. And now, one rainy morning, they found theyhad lost an adopted one. But each man looked into a face likewise sorueful that his own broke into a grin.

  "We'll just start a _new_ country," cried Driscoll abruptly.

  His voice sounded strange and very unlike him, but the inspiration wascharacteristic of the man, and true to the old irrepressible StormCentre they had known. Hunted outlaws, they too were in the mood for anydesperate venture. Spontaneous as wildfire, they seconded this one erethey had asked a question. They never did ask "How?"

  "A new country," roared Tall Mose, "but where?"

  "And when?" Old Brothers and Sisters inquired gently.

  "We'll start right after breakfast," their intrepid leader replied. "Andright here in Mexico. It's anybody's country yet, and we might as wellslice off a little private republic for ourselves."

  "And won't we fight, by Jiminy!" drawled Cal Grinders, with Ozarkiandeliberation.

  "And it don't matter whom we fight," Marmaduke added. "Let 'em showthemselves, Slim Max or Don Benito. We'll meet all comers."

  That was the mood they were in, and they were in it to the chin. Submita wholesale fighting order, and they bid for it like neither bulls norbears, but like wolves.

  "About taxation?" asked Clay of Carroll dubiously.

  But as a good general, or as another Romulus, Driscoll had figured itall out. His answer brought comfort.

  "We'll not have any. We will levy on commerce, as republics have theright to do."

  "Then," said Carroll of Clay, "we'll need a seaport?"

  "Of course. Ain't Tampico simply waiting for us? The French aren't therenow. They are concentrating in Mexico City for evacuation. There's nomore of a garrison than what Old Tige left, a few hundred Cossacks. Ifwe get there before the Liberals----" ...

  ... And why not? They were nearly five hundred and greater than Romulus.They were Missourians, sir. They were from that State which gave thebest fighters to both sides; which, population considered, gave more tothe North than any other Northern state, more to the South than anyother Southern state, and yet as a state would be a Republic untoherself. What, then, might not be possible to these her sons on aforeign shore? Intrepid youngsters, they were of royal State lineage,Missourians from Kentucky, Kentuckians from Virginia, which was in thebeginning. Dauntless cavaliers of the Blood, if they chose to carvethemselves a kingdom, why not?

  But they themselves answered the questions, questions that had men'slives in them thicker than hard words in the Blue-back speller. Thebusiness was as already done, and Mose Bledsoe could go back to hischant with an easy mind. And once more Missouri's revered saga echoedamong the crags:

  "I come from old Missouri, Yes, all the way from Pike. I'll tell you why I left there, And why I came to roam And leave my poor old mammy, So far away from home."

  Then, the bard leading in a fashion vociferous, the whole command helpedout:

&n
bsp; "Says she to me, 'Joe Bowers, You are the man to win; Here's a kiss to bind the bargain,' And she hove a dozen in...."

  ... Bivouacked under the black-lipped howitzers of Tampico's sullenheights.... Dismal fens ... where fever exhaled its dread gray breaththick over swamp and lagoon ... above, the vast aegis of the firmament,wrought in a diamond dust of stars ... a sickly, jaundiced, moon tilteddrunkenly.... Through ooze and fetid slime the Americans creptstealthily out of the reeds; and on, over cypress roots, silently in thesilent night; on, up the hill under the low walls of Fort Iturbide.Gently and fleeting as a dark beauty's sigh in old Castile, they werecome in canister range.

  "Steady, men," their leader whispered.

  "Unto death," came the low-breathed response.

  [No such words were uttered, as Daniel knew perfectly well, but he knewthat they should be--in the telling.].... A sharp cry ... fearfulalarums from the crest of the hill ... next a belching fury of grape....But Tall Mose was happier for it. The seal was off his lips at last, andout thundered his stentorian war-song:

  "O Sally! dearest Sally! O Sally! for your sake...."

  ... still upward, until the cannon fumes broke as a dun-colored waveover pennant and plume ... and grimy troops fell as spring blossoms in abalmy south breeze.... Dying as they loved to die, game to the last ...they stumbled back to the river, which swept over the gallant strangerslain....

  "... It's enough to make me swear!-- That Sally had a baby, And the baby had red hair...."

  ... Then piercing and wildly plaintive, the clarions rang out, clamoringfor victory and _vae victis_ ... and Din Driscoll's hoarse voice...."We are the last of the race, let us be the best as well."... "Back at'em, fellows!" Bledsoe bellows.... And the parson murmurs, "He praysbest who fights best, both great and small" ... his soft voice tremulousenough for Glory, his superb trigger finger disturbing enough forChaos.... At last, the supreme command "like volley'd lightning"--"Give'em the revolver. _Charge!_"...

  Not until the story is told shall ... for over the battered masonry, inthrough the splintered doors, felling shadowy foes on every hand....When well within-side ... the prowess of each unto himself ... tempestof pistol cracking ... bleeding deathfully ... ah, the killing is fastand desperate ... and not a candle over the pitiless fray.... Huddledtogether for a brief last stand, the Cossacks ... panic, flight...._The fort is taken!_

  When the incarnadine embers of sunrise glowed in the east, theMissourians stood on the battlements and surveyed their domain. "You arethe man to win, Joe Bowers," Mose hummed with an I-told-you-so air, butsoftly, for many of his comrades were wounded, though he was not, asusual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But "the Doc," ofBenton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble withDoc. If he attacked a hornet's nest, he would contrive some way to get aleg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter ofcourse, so now he crated himself together enough to move around andattend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably barked, with aperforated humerus as climax. [The modest Boone might have cataloguedsimilarly his own casualties.] Old Brothers and Sisters, that coolChristian, had lost a lens out of his spectacles, and was now replacingit from a supply he always carried. What, though, were fractured armsand busted specs to becoming a republic over night?

  But eternal vigilance is ever ... and menace was not long in coming.Three French gunboats, like sluggish water beetles, crossed the bar andsteamed up the river.... Promptly the howitzers on the ramparts weretrained.... But there was no need ... a white flag ... a navallieutenant at the fortress gate.... The gunboats had not come to fight.Bazaine had sent them to carry off the endangered garrison, it beingexpected that a Liberal army under a General Pavon would shortly besiegethe place. The Frenchman was astounded to find that the Liberals, as heimagined the Missourians, had already arrived. Driscoll allowed him toembark the dislodged garrison, as well as the defenders of the otherfort, Casa Mata; that is, all except those who might want to changesides. And nearly every Mexican among the Cossacks did change. It was asign of the panic that had spread throughout the Empire. Driscoll alsoinsisted on the burial of certain guerrilla corpses which Dupin had lefthanging to the town's lamp posts. After which the gunboats tookthemselves out of republican waters.

  Yet they left behind expectancy. So, a Liberal army two thousand strongwas approaching? The Missourians provisioned themselves from the townand rested on their arms. The Liberal host appeared, variegated ofcostume, piratical of aspect.... Again a flag of truce.... "If thesenores Imperialistas desired to surrender?"... "We are notImperialists," came the reply from the fort, "and we're blessedly d-n-dif we desire to surrender."... "Then, the saints bless us, _who_are you?"... "The Republic of Tampico, de facto and determined."

  The dumfounded Liberals scratched their heads. They were Republicans,and here was a republic, and naturally it bothered them. But when theyhad gotten it tangled unmistakably enough, they decided that they wantedsurrender anyhow, if the senores Tampicoistas would have the kindness... and on refusal from the fort, they withdrew to load their siegeguns.

  They had sent a shot or two and received a dozen, when an Indito,emaciated and loathsome from scales of dirt, dashed from nowhere throughthe cross-fire and pounded at the fortress door. Driscoll ordered himadmitted. The first President of the Tampico Republic seemedextraordinarily anxious about this ragged vagabond, especially as he hadperceived a second one, likewise from nowhere, dash into the Liberalcamp. Ten minutes later the enemy ceased firing. "Now come, all of you,"Driscoll then said to his little army, "and hear what he's got to tell.I reckon he's a Shorter Yet."... "From Shorty, then!" exclaimed his men.And so it proved, for the Indito produced the usual bit of parchment,signed El Chaparrito and countersigned Benito Juarez, Libertad yReforma. The message thereon demanded why the Coronel Driscoll and hisnew recruits for the cause had turned against it.... "'Cause we don'thanker after hanging," Cal Grinders interposed.... Was it, Driscollcontinued to read, because they thought they had lost favor by fightingRodrigo Galan? If so, there was naught against them, nothing, becausePresident Juarez had outlawed Galan for robbing a bullion convoy. It wastrue that the writer of the parchment had used the said Rodrigo, in thehope of capturing Maximilian, but the bandit was not for that reason aRepublican officer.... "In other words," lisped Crittenden of Nodaway,"we're in-lawed because the good patriot Don Rodrigo is awayoutlawed."... "Therefore," the parchment went on, "His Excellency thePresidente through the writer has herewith sent a message to GeneralPavon of the besieging camp to comply with whatever Their Mercies theAmericans may deem fit to require. Further, knowing the temper of TheirMercies, General Pavon is ordered to at once cease operations and leaveTheir Mercies in possession."

  The Missourians looked at one another and were reluctant. They hated toforego a battle. But it takes two sides to make one. Not outlawed, noteven threatened, they had no excuse to hold against the Liberals.

  "But," said Crittenden, "as an ally of this sister Republic, we'll stillhave our fighting."

  "Well," demanded Driscoll, "what will you ask for?"

  "Our Cordova lands back, after we've won them from the Empire."

  "And," put in Grinders, "equality. We want republican equality."

  "Then we'll all be privates?"

  "No sir-ee, by cracken! Equality high up, that's what! We'll becolonels, breveted colonels, every last one of us--Colonel Driscoll,Colonel Grinders, Colonel Brothers and Sisters, Colonel----"

  "That's easy," said Driscoll smiling. "Now I'll go and fix it up withGeneral Pavon, before he gets away."

  ... To conclude this chapter on the Missourians' Republic, there is yeta word, which perhaps is also explanation of the saddened change thathad come over Din Driscoll since that night after the battle with DonRodrigo. It must be remembered that the peerless lad had just won hisold comrades to the Mexican Republican cause. While yet rejoicing thathere he more than made good the three hundred Liberals he had helped tocapture when a captain under the Empire, he
found that he had only casthis recruits out of the pale of law, first against the Empire, and thenagainst the Republic.... Then he proposed their own republic, and forthemselves they took Tampico from the French. But why? What was the realobject in Driscoll's innermost thought? The suspicion arises: Was it towin a peace-offering wherewith to make friends again with the Liberals?Such an explanation of his otherwise wild scheme is but a theory, butthe theory fits, for John D. Driscoll, though as reckless as any andquick for any forlorn hope, was, when a leader, scrupulously practical.

  The above suggestion, moreover, is apropos in these later days, when theTampico Republic has become to be folklore throughout Missouri, and whenour cousins, the Kentuckians, even those proud colonels by acclamation,cannot rank beside these five hundred colonels scattered over the sisterstate; so that, when a stranger questions, a Missourian answers: "He acolonel? W'y yes, of course, sir. And, by God sir, a Tampico colonel,too! Yes, one of the five hundred!" and the stranger's eyes bulge as hetakes off his hat.

  [The deposition of Meagre Shanks ends here.]