The brigade marched as victors, but they remembered how they had formerly skulked as hunted guerrillas, and also, how Mendez had scourged the dissident villages. They found bodies hanging to trees. At Morelia a citizen who cried “Viva la Libertad!” had been brained with a sabre. It was the hour for reprisals. And Régules exacted suffering of the mocho, or clerical, towns that had sheltered the “traitors.” Requisitions for arms, horses, and provisions marked his path. Deserters swelled his ranks. He had enough left-overs from the evacuation to organize what in irony he called his Foreign Legion. At Acámbaro a second Republican army, under General Corona–“welcomer than a stack of blues,” as Boone said–more 372than doubled their force, and together they hastened on to Querétero.
But at Celaya, when men were thinking of rest in the cool monasteries there, they learned that they must not pause. The word came from El Chaparrito, who ever watched the Empire as a hawk poised in mid-air. General Escobedo of the Army of the North had pursued Miramon south into Querétero, but only to find him reinforced there by Mendez and the troops from the capital. This superior array meant to attack Escobedo, then turn and destroy Corona and Régules. The Republicans, therefore, must be united at once.
The message was no sooner heard than the two weary brigades of Corona and Régules set forth again. They covered the remaining thirty miles that night, expecting a victorious Imperialist army at each bend in the road. But they met instead, toward morning, a lone Imperialist horseman galloping toward them. Régules’s sharp eyes caught the glint of the stranger’s white gold-bordered sombrero, and with a large Castilian oath he plucked out his revolver. Driscoll touched his arm soothingly.
“But, María purísima,” cried Régules, “he’s an Explorador!”
The Exploradores were Mendez’s scouts, his bloodhounds for a Republican trail, and the most hated of all that breed.
“Aye, Señor General,” the stranger now spoke, “I was even the capitan of Exploradores, who kisses Your Mercy’s hand.”
There was a familiar quality in the man’s half chuckle, and Driscoll hastily struck a match. In its light a face grew before him, and a pair of malevolent eyes, one of them crossed and beaming recognition, met his.
“Well, Tibby?” said Driscoll quietly.
“First your pistols, then what you know,” commanded Régules. “Here, in between us. Talk as we ride, or––”
Don Tiburcio complied. Such had been his intention.