“Sacred name of a dog, you are honored, señor!” Dupin exclaimed reprovingly. It angered him when a victim quailed. The present one ought to appreciate, too, that he was answering for two besides himself, for Murguía and Rodrigo, whose escape had wrenched the old warrior’s bowels.
The Storm Centre glanced at the picked hussars, at the 233famously infamous Cossacks, and assented modestly. So plain in gray, he did indeed look colorless among them. The Contra at his elbow was an American, whose brutish, swaggering scowl meant the world to know what a bad man he was. The type gives the decent citizen a mad desire to be bad himself just once, only long enough to prove the tough a contemptible sham. Driscoll’s neighbor leered ferociously, that the prisoner flanked by sabres and muskets might respect him and be cowed. Driscoll kept him in mind, and in the tail of his eye.
There was one anxiety for the Storm Centre. If they should bind him! But they had not, he was so docile. And as they marched out the door, he exulted, and could hardly wait. Wouldn’t it be a lovely row, though! Just one good, last good time! He did not feel hard toward them, not when they had left off the ropes. He felt that he was to have value received, and all the while he figured out his desperate campaign.
As they passed outside beyond the window’s sphere of light, docility changed to whirlwind. A blow with his left, a jerk with his right, and he had the tough’s carbine. He swung it between the two files, a grazing circle. He got blows in return, but not a man fired. That was because of the darkness, and a first shot would inspire a wild, general fusillade, endangering them all. As it was, the blows were impartial, except one, which came down with pointed favoritism on the tough’s cranium. After that Driscoll helped one side or another, and when they were nicely mixed, he ran. He got as far as the road, but to find a troop of cavalry charging down upon him. Changing ends with the carbine, he fired from the waist at the leader of the new arrivals. This leader dropped his sabre, plunged heavily, and was dragged by the stirrup. Driscoll had not the time to change back to club musket, he used the barrel as such. But being for the instant alone, he was marked 234out, and Cossacks and Dragoons threw themselves upon him and brought him down.
“It was lovely,” he muttered under the heap.
They brought him back to the house, swathed in a mesh of lariats. Lopez awaited them, frothing oaths. Dupin was there too, and he looked an epicure’s satisfaction as they stood his victim against the wall. He did not regret the incident, since it had turned porridge into so choice a morsel.
“’Tis you, monsieur,” he confessed with rugged grace, “who have honored us.”
“Oh, your grandmother!” said Driscoll.
“Well, be patient. It will be all over in a minute more.”
The Tiger was, in fact, ordering the shooting squad, when through the open door glittering helmets and excited French and clanking sabres flooded the room. It was still another wondrous uniform for Driscoll, this of the cuirassiers, with so much of brass, and a queue of horse’s hair, and loose pantaloons that merged into gigantic black boots. In they strode, an agitated host of bristling moustaches, while outside was the restless sound of many hard breathed horses. The cuirassiers bore their wounded leader, and laid him on the iron bed in the room. But the man struggled to his feet. He called loudly for “Monsieur le Colonel,” and only by force, though gentle, could they hold him quiet.