The fight was a rousing one, and Driscoll enjoyed himself for the first time in many days. His Mexicans behaved as he could have wished, better than he had hoped. At the start in the familiar uproarious hell, he missed the hard set, exultant faces of his old Jackson county troop, and seeing only tawny visages through the smoke and hearing only foreign yells, he felt a queer twinge of homesickness. But he was at once ashamed, for the humble little chocolate centaurs whom he had been set to train were dying about him with lethargic cynicism, just as they were bidden. Wearing a charm, either the Virgin’s picture in a tin frame, or the cross, they might have worn the crescent. They were as effective as Moslems. They were ruthless fatalists.
Michel Ney also spent a diverting half-hour. He had lingered for the fray. Waving a broken sabre snapped off at the hilt, he charged with Gallic verve and got himself knocked under his kicking and wounded horse, and pummeled by Liberal muskets on every side. Driscoll saw, and straightened out matters. Handing the Frenchman a whole sabre, he reproved him soberly, as a carpenter might an apprentice caught using a plane for a ripsaw.
After it was over, the living of the enemy were prisoners. The victors marched them to Uruapan near by, because it was charged that at this place two of the captured Liberals, Generals Arteaga and Salazar, had lately shot two Imperialists. Here, in their turn, they were promptly executed.
Driscoll heard the volleys, ran to the spot, and saw the last horrid spasms.
“What–what––”
Ney turned on him a sickened look.
287“Don’t you know, it’s the new decree.”
“What new decree? These dead men were prisoners of war. If murderers, they weren’t tried.”
“It’s the decree I brought from Maximilian, the decree of general amnesty.”
Driscoll glared fiercely at such a jest, but to his utter amazement Ney was quite in earnest.