CHAPTER XI
FATALITY AND THE MISSOURIAN
"Si debbe ai colpi della sua fortuna Voltar il viso di lagrime asciutto." --_Machiavelli._
The mountain villages were arming. Bronzed men, savagely joyful, pouredfrom under roofs of thatch, strapping on great black lead-weightedbelts. In the corrals others lassoed horses. It looked like a suddenchanging from peaceful highland domesticity, as the clans of Scotland orthe cantons of Helvetia might gather. But these men were not rising todefend their homes. The hamlets clustered among the crags were theirbarracks, nothing more. The wildest canyons of the Sierra Madre del Sur,far away in the rocky southwestern corner of the continent, were onlytheir camping grounds, their refuge. To be armed was their naturalstate. They were fighters by occupation. They were an army. Unceasinghardship and constant peril had seasoned them, and their discipline wasperfect, unconscious, because it came from the herding instinct ofwolves. During years they had waged war against a ruthless foe, andthey, too, were relentless. The penalty of defeat was massacre.
The foe of this army was a greater army, and between the two it was aduel of chieftains, of General Regules in the Sierra, of General Mendezon the plain. Deadlier antagonists might not be imagined. Mendez, he whohad shot two Republican generals under the Black Decree, was above allmen the likeliest to hold stubborn Michoacan for the Empire. But even hefailed, because the man against him was not less a man than he, becausealso the spark of resistance to sceptre and crosier never dies out inMichoacan.
The man as good as he was Regules. A Spaniard, Regules had fought withthe Catholic Don Carlos. And now, he was suffering for Mexican Liberalsthe most that any general can suffer, defeat after defeat, and sometimesannihilation. But he was a Marion, a Fabius. He knew the mountainrecesses as no one else, even better than Mendez, who was born amongthem, and here he would gather fugitives, draft every straggler, untilin time he sallied forth again to badger his arch enemy. He hoped onlyto exist till that day when the French should leave Empire and Republicface to face, on equal terms. It had taken tenacious faith and gloomyyears, but the day came at last. The news sifted through defile andgorge. The invader had embarked for Toulon. Nearer at hand Mendez hadevacuated Morelia, and was marching to Queretero. And at Queretero wasMiramon, driven there from the north by Escobedo. At Queretero was theEmperor--was the Empire, desperate, ferocious, an animal at bay. Outboldly upon the plain, then! But no longer as a slinking guerrillahorde! As an army rather, with thrilling bugles and the Mexican eaglealoft, and regiment numbers in gold on pennons of brightest red! For theEmpire was the hunted mad-dog now, and the dignified host was theRepublic. The barracks of the Sierra were arming.
In one of the corrals an officer of cavalry was quelling insubordinationwith soft words. But the mutineers, not knowing their man, did notfathom the dangerous sweetness of his tone. They were deserters fromMendez, come that morning, and as they had horses, were foisted on theofficer's splendid troop. But like the native infantry, they insistedthat their women, the soldaderas, should go with them on what was to bea swift march to Queretero. Having brought useful information concerningMendez, they were insolent in their demands.
"Now, muchachos," said the officer of cavalry, "you see how absurd itis, so quiet down. The women can follow later."
"A Gringo to dictate to us, bless me the saints! Us, free Mexicans, andRepublicans!" And the ringleader drew his machete and rushed on theofficer.
The Gringo smiled, in a way that a man rarely smiles. His eyes opened inmild surprise, and as the mutineers looked to see his head roll from hisshoulders, he was still smiling in that poisonously sweet way. Perhapsthere passed across his face just the shadow of pity or of revulsion,but none might say for certain, because of a pistol's flash that came soquickly after. With the report the assailant plunged headlong, and onthe ground seemed to shrivel in his rags. Behind the smoke the officerwas carelessly holding a large black revolver, no higher than his hip.
"Because," he added, "it's not a woman's game."
Then he thrust the weapon back under his ribs and sauntered away. Themutineers gaped in trembling at his back. When they picked up theringleader, they saw that his fingers had been neatly clipped at thehilt of the machete.
The cavalry officer was Driscoll--but changed! He was changed as blandMephisto would change a man, if the material were adaptable and Mephistoan artist. Such exquisite gentleness in peril and in slaying could be noother than the devil's own, and in the most devilishly artistic mood ofthat suave dilettante.
It was natural that any man should color somewhat into a desperado,considering such an existence among those Sierras, but Driscoll was adesperado refined by cynicism. And yet there was still naught ofself-consciousness in it all. The change had not been abrupt, butgradual, as a growing into maturity. The roughened native instincts of agentleman had sobered from Quixotic impulses into a diabolic calm. Hisbravery was turned to cool and almost supernatural self possession,mocked withal by gentleness. And yet he was not a villain. To themutineers, to those who beheld his smile, he seemed a fiend. But hishorse knew no change in him, which was significant. Something had gonewrong, that was all. The young man who had looked out on the world, halfchallenging, half expectant, must have seen too suddenly that part oflife which is unlovely. However, the thing may not be thus easilyexplained. The soul of a man, when bent or distorted under stress, is aweird and fearful growth. One may contemplate it in awe; but understandit, never.
More than a year before, when Driscoll changed sides, he was embarrassedto find a side to change to, so thoroughly had the Empire swept away allvestiges of the Liberal strength. But on achieving that farewell of histo Mendez, he rode happily southward, with some vague notion of trackingthe Republic into Michoacan. The first night he slept under the starsmid tunas and Spanish daggers, and when he awoke it was to find astrange Indito squatting patiently at his feet. He sat up and rubbed hiseyes at what might have been a Hindoo image, except that it doffed astraw sombrero.
"Y'r Mercy is awake?" queried the idol.
"N-o, but it will probably not be long now. Who in thunder are you?"
The Indito explained, and Driscoll covered his knees with his hands, andstared and grew more astounded. The ragged fellow said that he hadescaped from Mendez's camp by squirming on his belly through the cacti,and he had followed the American senor, on foot. He was, he added, aRepublican spy.
Driscoll mechanically drew his pistol, but recalled that now he also wasRepublican.
"But why follow me?" he demanded.
"I was sent to watch only Y'r Mercy, Y'r Mercy's thousand pardons."
"The devil!"
"And with Y'r Mercy's permission, I was to kill Y'r Mercy at the firstchance. But since Y'r Mercy has changed sides----"
"Now look here, who--who put you up to this business, I want to know?"
The man shrugged his shoulders. He only knew that a senor chaparro hadsent him.
"A short senor?" Driscoll repeated. "Then we might call you a ShorterYet, and maybe you know where this Republica is hiding out?"
The Indito brightened. "That's why I'm here, senor. I'll take Y'r Mercyto the Citizen General Regules."
At the name Driscoll frowned involuntarily, but laughed as he againremembered that he no longer shared the Imperialist hates.
"Regules?" he repeated. "But we all thought he was dead, since the lasttime we scoured his mountains."
"That the Virgin would have let me kill Y'r Mercy before then!" said theIndito regretfully. "But no matter, Y'r Mercy will discover that thecitizen general is still alive."
And so he was. They found him in the wildest of the wild region of theSierra Madre del Sur, far away beyond the Rio de las Balsas, beyondMichoacan, in the impassable tierra caliente of the Pacific slope. TheIndians here were the Pintos, who knew naught of the world outside, andowned allegiance to none but a grizzly old dictator, royally describedas the Panther of the South. One thing was certain, the Empire couldnever follow Re
gules to the fever and ambush of the Panther's marshyrealm, and Regules was hard pressed indeed when he sought suchprotection. But he was there now, in that last refuge of Liberalism,alone, wounded, fever stricken, emaciated, but undaunted. Driscoll foundhim so, and became his first recruit.
For the moment Regules had no army, but armies were only weaponsbrandished by the real principals in the duel. Over battle and rout andslaughter the two chiefs would glare each at the other, blade in handand panting, but either ever ready for the stroke that should thrustthrough the army to the heart of its general. Such a struggle neededonly antiquity and a bard to be Homeric. No Greek could equal eitherchampion in cunning, nor Trojan in prowess, nor both in grim persistenceand rugged hate. It was truly a fight to have a hand in, and with big,lusty zest, the Storm Centre bounded into the lists. He leaped backwardinto the age of colossal, naked emotions, which strove as great veinedgiants with a rude splendor that was barbaric. It was the grandeur ofprimeval man, of majesty resting on him who fought best. After athousand years of roof and tableware a man may be no longer primeval,but he is no longer quite a man either if his primeval state does notsometimes appeal to him. As for the young Missourian, he was enthralled.
During that winter, the Spaniard and the American were a recruitingsquad of two, picking up the seeds of rebellion among the fertile rocks.The vago, or poor Indito, was drafted wherever caught. Guerrillafugitives rejoined their leader. The little band grew slowly, but inappearance merited Mendez's contemptuous epithet of brigand thieves.Fluttering yellow rags revealed only leathery-hided bones. Sandalssloughed away. There were a few machetes, and one or two venerablemusketoons. But the commoner weapon was a heavy wooden staff, used fortrudging up the steep paths. Imagine a Mexican abandoning his horse! Butpursuers often tracked "the brigand thieves" by their mounts dying hereand there--a pitiful blazed trail. And their exhausted riders often laydown as well, and would not rise, though Regules lashed them, though theterrible Mendez followed close behind. If at this time the Republiccompared its conditions with the tapestried court in Mexico, then hopeof success must have seemed lugubrious irony. Yet there was thewatchword still, "Viva la Intervencion del Norte!" Regules looked to theUnited States to drive away the French. Driscoll's face would twist to agrimace. It was a peculiar position for an ex-Confederate.
The Republicans in Michoacan were cut off from all outside help, whilethose along the Rio Grande drew from the friendly Americans in Texasmuch aid and comfort. Driscoll pondered on this, until in June he gotleave to go to the Cordova colony and there enlist, if possible, his oldcomrades of Shelby's brigade. The result is known. After the affair atTampico, he came back with a troop of colonels. They were the nucleus ofa cavalry which he loved more than Demijohn, more than his ugly pistols,more than his pipe.
It was a grim affection that Driscoll bore his regiment of horse. He wasno longer the same man as when he left. He returned from Cordova with amood on him, which settled more and more heavily as he nursed his troopsinto a splendid fighting machine. There was a dangerously quietexultation in the patience with which he built the regiment up to fullstrength and trained it into the power of a brigade. He did wondersthrough the idea, pleasantly instilled, that much of the fun of fightinglies in the winning, and he demolished, as an absurd fetich, the ideathat the hunted men of Regules were doomed never to win.
Thus he labored with the Inditos, his terrible little fatalists incombat. There were enough to choose from, since by now the tide ofdesertion was changing toward the Republic. The problem of mounts intime solved itself. The French began selling their horses rather thantransport them back to Europe, and these being declared contraband ofwar by the Liberal government, were complacently taken away from theirowners without even Juarez script in payment. The question of armsproved more troublesome, but the answer at last was even moresatisfactory. For the besieged at Queretero, Driscoll's troop laterbecame some unfamiliar dragon hissing an incessant flame of poisonousbreath. This was due to a strange and mystical weapon which not onlycarried a ball farther than any rifle known before, but sixteen of them,one after the other. The strange and mystical weapon multiplied a loneman into a very genii of death, until the Missourian's twelve hundredwere more to be dreaded than many battalions.
The repeating rifles, it may be explained, formed a part of the cachewhich General Shelby had made on crossing into Mexico. He had takenthem, among other things, from the Confederate depositories in Texas.Driscoll knew of the cache through Boone, and by infinite patience hadit brought into Michoacan. A solitary Indito journeyed eight hundredmiles unnoticed with some seeming fragments of scrap iron. Other vagoswere in front of him. Others followed. And these passed yet others,empty handed, trudging in the opposite direction. So an arsenal came tothe Sierra Madre del Sur all the way from the Rio Grande, and each andevery cavalier, whether miserable ranchero or veteran Missourian, becamean engine of destruction, good for a fusillade of forty shots withoutthe biting of a cartridge, for sixteen from his rifle, for six from eachof his revolvers, and after these, good for terrific in-fighting withhis dragoon sabre. It was no marvel that Driscoll loved such a troop,but the wonder lay in his smile, soft and purring and far-away, as hestroked his murderous darling.
Colonel Daniel Boone, chief of scouts, was harassed nearly to insomniaover the change in his friend. At the bottom of the mystery there mustbe inspiration for a glowing line, and with pen ready poised over theviolet fluid of romance, it was disheartening to have the solution eludehim. He proposed clues as a poet tests rhymes. There was vendetta. Therewas blighted passion. But he ruefully discarded both. Either would bemarked by violent growth, while this thing that touched the Storm Centreformed as slowly as the gravity of wisdom. But what baffled most wasthat Driscoll himself was completely oblivious. If _he_ knewnothing of the effect, how then could one ask him about the cause?
Daniel, however, overlooked the fact that a malady may break outvariously, according to temperament. As an instance Daniel's patientwould lose himself in reverie, long and deep and mellowing. Now he wasriding with a girl whose gray eyes were upon him in that pensive way shehad; or rather, in the pensive way of a girl who finds herself in love,and wondering at it, seeks to learn the reason through a grave scrutinyof the object. It seemed very good to be riding with her again likethat, for there was a soothing sense of companionship, of dearcamaraderie that needed no words, but only that expression of her mouthand a pair of gray eyes. The day dream, while it lasted, had nothing ofbitterness, but lulled his soul instead, and when it passed, he would beleft with thankfulness for his moment of fleeting bliss and ineffablecomfort. Or again, he awoke to reality with a longing that fiercelywould not be denied. "Oh, I want--Jack'leen!" Often and often theimperious smothered cry all but passed his lips. And then he would shakehimself, as out of physical slumber, and he would take up his lifeagain. But he would be a shade deeper in the devil's own mood, ofgentleness and a smile.
After Cuernavaca Driscoll had brooded somewhat, yet rather as a boywhose melancholy is callow and easily fades. But during that evening inBoone's cabin, he had changed to a man, for it was then he came to knowthe meaning of possession, and in the same moment he learned the meaningof loss. A dull and indefinable resentment thereafter grew on him. Butagainst whom? Against no one, perhaps. Yet he had had a vision of hislife's dearest happiness, and it was gone, that vision, beyond recall.
Ignorant as he was of Jacqueline's mission, Driscoll had but oneexplanation. A man had been born a prince, and a prince dazzles a woman.Yet the rankling in him was neither because of the prince, nor becauseof the woman. It was much more hopeless than that. It was because a mancould be born a prince at all. Something was out of harmony in theworld. The irony of it made him grim, and to his sense of humor thatsuch things could be came the smile. A prince in the New World and inthe Nineteenth Century!--Now here was as incongruous a juxtaposition asa bull in a crockery shop. And the result?--A people robbed of theirdignity as men; a spike among the cogs, and the machinery everywheregrin
ding discordantly. For the pilfered people, however, the mattercould be righted, and Driscoll felt his vague wrath as one with theirs.Together they would drive the bull from the shop. The Mexicans couldlater repair _their_ crockery. But as to his own precious littlebit of bric-a-brac, that was shattered beyond hope. His only balm was tohelp the other sufferers. His only resentment was against fatality. Butto pout at fatality is such a foolish business that he smiled, in agentlemanly, sardonic way. Lucifer himself would be obsequious beforefatality. And as for presuming to chastise it, that does indeed requirethe devil's own mood.
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