“And with Y’r Mercy’s permission, I was to kill Y’r Mercy at the first chance. 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 señor chaparro had sent him.
“A short señor?” Driscoll repeated. “Then we might call you a Shorter Yet, and maybe you know where this República is hiding out?”
The Indito brightened. “That’s why I’m here, señor. I’ll take Y’r Mercy to the Citizen General Régules.”
At the name Driscoll frowned involuntarily, but laughed as he again remembered that he no longer shared the Imperialist hates.
“Régules?” he repeated. “But we all thought he was dead, since the last time we scoured his mountains.”
“That the Virgin would have let me kill Y’r Mercy before then!” said the Indito regretfully. “But no matter, Y’r Mercy will discover that the citizen general is still alive.”
And so he was. They found him in the wildest of the wild region of the Sierra Madre del Sur, far away beyond the Rio de las Balsas, beyond Michoacan, in the impassable tierra caliente of the Pacific slope. The Indians here were the Pintos, who knew naught of the world outside, and owned allegiance to none but a grizzly old dictator, royally described as the Panther of the South. One thing was certain, the Empire could never follow Régules to the fever and ambush of the Panther’s marshy realm, and Régules was hard pressed indeed when he sought such protection. But he was there now, in that last refuge of Liberalism, alone, wounded, fever stricken, emaciated, but undaunted. Driscoll found him so, and became his first recruit.