422CHAPTER XVI
Vendetta’s Half Sister, Better Born
“When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.”
–Emerson.
Just outside Driscoll’s tent, under the stars, a fragrant steak was broiling. The colonel’s mozo had learned the magic of the forked stick, and he manipulated his wand with a conscious pride, so that the low sizzling of flesh and flame was as the mystic voice in some witch’s brew. There were many other tents on the plain, a blurred city of whitish shadows against the night, and there were many other glowing coals to mark where the earth lay under the stars, and the witching murmur, the tantalizing charm of each was–supper. In this wise, and thinking themselves very patient, men were waiting for other men to starve to death. The besieged had tried, but they had not again cut through to food.
In Driscoll’s tent there was a galaxy of woolen-shirted warriors, a constellation of quiescent Berserkers. For they were Missouri colonels, except one, who being a Kansan, required no title. They were tobacco-chewing giants, famous for expectoration. Except Meagre Shanks, who tilted his inevitable black cigar now toward one eye, now toward the other. Except the Storm Centre, who fondly closed his palm over his cob meerschaum and felt its warmth and seemed far away, a dangerous poet. Except Old Brothers and Sisters, most austere of Wesleyans, who had neither pipe nor quid. He was cleaning his pistols. They were men hewn for mighty deeds, but–cringe must we all 423before the irony that neither life nor romance may dodge–it was not a mighty deed which that night was to exact of them, which yet they were brave enough to do, though sorry the figures they thought they made.
Politics was their theme, since men, though busy with war and death, must yet relieve their statesmen, especially after supper, and neatly arrange the Tariff, Resumption, or whatever else. Like oracles the ex-Confederates held forth that the Yankees had only driven out the French to march in themselves, and so tutor the Mexicans in self-government. To which the Kansan ventured a minority opinion, though being thus a judge of the bench, as it were, he had no need of the oaths he took.
“Why God help me and to thunder with you, the United States ain’t aiming at any protectorate. You unreconstructed Rebs simply cain’t and won’t see good faith in the Federal government!”
“Carpet bags?” Driscoll murmured sweetly. It was the majority opinion.
“Yes sir’ee,” and Daniel took the cue as a bit in the mouth, “there’s blood on the face of the moon up there, acerrima proximorum odia, by God sir! Look at the troops at our elections! Look at the Drake Test Oath! Look at––” Mr. Boone was fast getting vitriolic, in heavy editorial fashion, when a famished face, a wolfish face, appeared between the flaps of the tent. “Look at–that!”
Politics vanished, war and death resumed their own.