173CHAPTER XXI
The Red Mongrel
“Be this the whetstone of your sword; let grief
Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.”
–Macbeth.
“Where,” inquired Din Driscoll, with a benevolent interest in their doing the thing right, “is the judge advocate?”
Colonel Miguel Lopez resented what he took for a patronizing concern. It festered his complacency, for his was the code of the bowed neck to those above and the boot-tip for those below. Luckily for him, he did not strike the helpless prisoner. He turned to his judge’s bench instead, which was none other than the frayed and stately sofa of honor from the hacienda sala, deemed requisite to his dignity. The satin upholstery contrasted grotesquely with the adobe walls. Pungent tallow dips lighted the granary to a dull yellow, and mid the sluggish tobacco clouds were a shrinking prisoner in clerical black, and the mildly interested prisoner in gray, and red uniforms surrounding.
Lopez flung his sword across the empty box that was to serve as desk, and filled the crimson seat with pompous menace. Lopez was a Mexican, but did not look it. He had red hair and a florid skin, and he was large, with great feet and coarse hands. Yet the high cheek bones of an Indian were his. The contrast of coloring and features unpleasantly suggested a mongrel breed. The eyes had red lids, out of which the lashes struck like rusted needles, and the eyes themselves, of a faded blue, seemed to fawn an excuse for Nature’s maladjusting. 174But he had a goodly frame on which to hang the livery of a king’s guardsman. And as the cross of the Legion of Honor ticketed his breast, he must have been a goodly man too, and his Maker’s insignia only a libel. Once Maximilian had said, “What, Bebello, and art thou a better judge of men than I, thy master and the master of men?” For it seemed that Bebello, the simple hound, had read Nature’s voucher instead of Napoleon’s, and being thus deceived, would ever snarl at the Colonel of Dragoons. Maximilian of course knew better. What looked like toadying was only profound deference for himself. The royal favorite could discriminate. He could also be the thick-headed, intolerable martinet. The sandy lashes bristled as the American inquired a second time if he were to have counsel.
“Being president of this court,” Lopez announced, “I am judge advocate.”
In the tone of congratulation Driscoll blandly said, “Well, then, I challenge the president.”
“Challenge?”
“Certainly, Your Honor. It’s my right, either on the ground of inexperience, malice, or–but I reckon the first two will do.”