He began, with coy hesitancy, to beat his scruples around the bush, which was not a bad lead. Supposing he turned his offer from Maximilian to President Juarez, wouldn’t it, well, look as though he did so to save his hide? Brown Johnny opened his eyes as at something unfamiliar. Driscoll went on. If he were shot, how was he to go to Juarez? But if he, uh, happened to get loose, he might just possibly be influenced 230to think of the Juarez proposal. But actually buying his way out would look dishonorable. “Now,” he concluded abruptly, “run along, and put it that way to whoever sent you.”
The man protested, and in some genuine alarm, that he had no employers.
“Oh all right,” said Driscoll easily, “then you’re bound to help me. Because if you don’t, I’ll sure tell Lopez what you’ve just been trying to hatch up here.”
The trap worked beautifully, for the guard tried hard to quake. But his fright was not spontaneous enough. Driscoll smiled. Now he knew the real player in the game.
“Cheer up, Johnny,” he spoke soothingly, “I’d not tell on you. But hadn’t you better go and think it over by yourself a little?”
The Baptist would hasten straight to Lopez, and Lopez, Driscoll foresaw, would interpret his scruples into a disguised acceptance. The crookedness of the game left the American no other trump, and he played it–against immediate death. Lopez, of course, would send him under guard to Juarez, but Driscoll thought he could trust that staunch old Roman, when once informed, to call for a new deck and an honest deal.
Juan Bautista “thought it over” outside, and directly returned with an answer. But when he again left Driscoll, he did not bar the door behind him. Within ten minutes thereafter Driscoll was creeping past a sleeping sentinel, on between rows of maguey, toward the road. Around him hovered five or six shadows. They were to be his escort and take him to Juarez. They would join him openly a safe distance away, at a place where their horses waited. But as he emerged upon the road, for the moment alone, a voice in French challenged sharply. “Halte-là!”
The shadows hesitated an instant, then showed themselves with energy. They sprang out and closed on their “escaped” prisoner. They handled him more roughly than did the 231Contra Guerrillas, who had first cried “Halt,” and who were now appearing as by magic. The blended anger and gratification of the shadows over the escape and recapture was vociferously sincere.
“Take them all, mes enfants,” a huge tone of command filled the darkness. It was Colonel Dupin. He had that moment arrived. Jacqueline’s message had reached him in the City not an hour before. The American had escaped, it said; he was at Tuxtla. The Tiger, knowing nothing of Lopez lying in wait for the same American at the same place, had dismounted his men, surrounded town and farms, and was closing in, when Driscoll himself fell among them.
The interview between Dupin and Lopez brewed stormy at first. The latter turned gray under his ruddy skin when Dupin walked in upon him in the front room of the farmhouse. But seeing that his own men were holding Driscoll, he nervously congratulated them upon the capture.