“To think,” she half cried, “that we are losing this–all this! And yet we have won it! Mon Dieu, have we not won it? Yet for whom, alas? Maximilian?–Faw, an ungrateful puppet such as that, to have, to take from us, such as–this! Now suppose,” her lips formed the unuttered words, while her gray eyes closed to a narrowing cunning, “just suppose that we–that someone–reminds His Majesty how ingratitude falls short of courtesy between emperors.”
The boy’s thoughts were of the country he had lost. Those of the resplendent and wayward butterfly were of an empire 68she meant to gain. But in her, who might suspect the consummate diplomat? Even then she was speaking to Murguía, asking if it were not time that Fra Diavolo remembered his engagements. Driscoll heard the query, and his comment was a mental shrug of the shoulders.
69CHAPTER IX
Toll-Taking in the Huasteca
“And when he came bold Robin before,
Robin asked him courteously,
‘O, hast thou any money to spare,
For my merry men and me?’”
–Robin Hood.
For all his campaigner’s instincts, the first of Driscoll’s expected troubles came and was gone before he knew that it was trouble. It arrived so naturally, and was so well behaved! With a stop for a bowl of coffee at a roadside fonda, they had been traveling for perhaps five hours, when Driscoll saw the heads of two horses and their riders over the brush, and at a turn in the trail he found that they were coming leisurely toward him. He observed them suspiciously, and wistfully. The wild tropics around him had quite won his heart as peculiarly adapted to violent amusements of a desperate tinge, far more so really than his own Missouri woodlands. Yet thus far the uneventful tameness had depressed him as a shameful waste of environment.
To boot all, here was this brace of villainous, well-armed Mexicans not giving the least promise of entertainment. There was nothing to distinguish them from the usual sun-baked rancheros of the Huasteca, unless it were the first man’s straw sombrero, the heavy silver mounting of which must have been worth in bullion alone a fair pocketful of pesos. There was a cord of silver hanging over the broad brim, and there was a silver “T” on one side of the sugar loaf, an “M” on the 70other side, and a Roman sword in front, and all three were linked together in fanciful silver scrolls. But the rest of the man was wretched. His feet were encased in the guaraches, or sandals, of a peon. One of his eyes was so crossed that hardly more than a baleful crescent was ever visible. The other vaquero, his companion, had no relieving trait at all, either luxurious or strikingly evil. His breeches of raw leather flapped loosely from the knee down, and at the sides they were slit, revealing the dirty white of cotton calzoncillos beneath. Though the April morning was hot, a crimson serape covered his shoulders. Both men had pistols, and each also had a long machete two inches wide hanging with a lariat from his saddle.
They lifted their sombreros, and he of the gorgeous one inquired if that were Don Anastasio’s outfit coming up behind. A civil answer was merest traveler’s courtesy, and Driscoll reluctantly took his cob pipe from his mouth to reckon that they were pretty nearly correct. He might have loaned them a thousand dollars, to judge from their gratitude, and they made way for him by drawing off the trail entirely. Here they halted till all the burros and horses had gone by. The muleteers in passing them, confusedly touched their hats. Murguía, who was then in the rear, stopped when he saw the two strangers. Driscoll looked back, but judged from the greetings that the three were old acquaintances. The assiduously respectful bearing of the timorous old man was to be counted as only habitual. And when he saw one of Don Anastasio’s mozos bring a bottle and glasses, he was completely reassured, and rested like the others of the caravan some little distance ahead.
Murguía dismissed the mozo, himself poured the cognac, and begged the honor of drinking health and many pesetas to his two “friends.” They craved a like boon, and the clinking of the copitas followed ceremoniously.