“But–” Maximilian called, staying him. “Dios mio, such news merits a longer telling. It seems to me too, Señor Americano, that you should enjoy it the more, since it was partly you who brought me to this.”
“I don’t know as I’d thought of that. How?”
“You ask how? Do you forget how you took the traitor Lopez to Escobedo, the night I was betrayed?”
470Driscoll swung bluntly round on his questioner. “No I don’t,” he replied. “But you see, there was such a lot of bloodshed scheduled for the next day?”
“Isn’t that rather a curious reproof from a soldier? Loyal hearts would have bled, yes, and gladly. Noble fellows, they would have saved their Emperor!”
Driscoll half snorted, and turned on his heel. But he stopped, his lips pressed to a clean, hard line. “What of those townsmen in the trenches?” he demanded. “It wasn’t their fight.”
Maximilian’s eyes opened very wide, and slowly his expression changed. The thick lower lip drooped and quivered. Suddenly he came nearer the American, a trembling hand outstretched.
“I was saved that,” he murmured earnestly.
“They were,” the grim trooper corrected him.
“The townsmen, yes. But I–I was kept from murder. God in heaven, I would have murdered them! Ah, señor, if I could put to my account a night’s work such as yours, that night, when you used the traitor! I could almost thank Lopez. I do thank you.”