Then there beat into Driscoll’s ears the furious clatter of hoofs. It deafened him, the familiar, glorious din of it. The blood raged in his veins like fiery needle points. To see them–the cavalry, the cavalry! Then they were gone–a flashing streak of centaurs, a streamer of red in a blur of dust, maniac oaths, and pistol shots, and sweeping sabres. Hacked bodies were sucked beneath the swarm as saplings under an avalanche. Driscoll sprang up and gazed. Through eddying swirls he still could see red sleeved arms reach out, and lightning rays of steel, and half-naked fleeting creatures go down, and never a jot of the curse’s speed abate.
“Lordy, but Old Joe should ’a seen it!” he fairly shouted. He was thinking of Shelby, of the Old Brigade back in Missouri; daredevils, every one of them.
93Don Tiburcio had sighted the vengeful horde from afar, and had recognized them, since he was, in fact, one of their scouts. They were the Contra Guerrillas, the Cossacks, the scourge wielded by the French Intervention and the Empire. And they were Don Tiburcio’s cue to loyalty. For seeing them, he began firing on his late friends, the brigands. Yet he spared their Capitan. At the first alarm Fra Diavolo had vaulted astride his black horse, and Tiburcio darting out, had caught his bridle, and turned him into the dry bed of the arroyo. Others of the fugitives tried to escape by this same route, but Tiburcio fought them off with clubbed rifle, and in such occupation was observed by him who led the Cossacks, who was a terrible old man, and a horseman to give the eye joy. At the gully he swerved to one side, and let the hurricane pass on by.
“Sacred name of thunder,” he cursed roundly, “a minute later and––”
“Si, mi coronel,” the faithful Tiburcio acknowledged gratefully, “Your Excellency came just in time.”
The colonel of Contra Guerrillas frowned a grim approval for his scout’s handiwork of battered skulls. He was a man of frosted visage, a grisly Woden. The hard features were more stern for being ruggedly venerable. His beard was wiry, hoary gray, through whose billowy depth a long black cigar struck from clenched teeth. If eyes are windows of the soul, his were narrow, menacing slits, loopholes spiked by bristling brows. Two deep creases between the eyes furrowed their way up and were lost under an enormously wide sombrero. This sombrero was low crowned, like those worn farther to the south, and ornately flowered in silver. His chest was crossed with braid, cords of gold hung from the right shoulder to the collar, and the sleeves were as glorious as a bugler’s. His brick-red jacket fell open from the neck, exposing the whitest of linen. His boots were yellow, his spurs big Mexican 94discs. Altogether the blend in him of the precise military and the easy ranchero was curiously picturesque. But Colonel Dupin, the Tiger of the Tropics, was a curious and picturesque man. His medals were more than he could wear, and each was for splendid daring. But on a time they had been stripped from him. It happened in China. He had made a gallant assault on the Imperial Palace, but he had also satiated his barbarian soul in carnage and loaded his shoulders with buccaneering loot. And though he wondered at his own moderation, a court martial followed. However, Louis Napoleon gave him back his medals, and sent him to Mexico to stamp out savagery by counter savagery.
“There were two accomplices in this business,” the Tiger was saying, “one a trader, Murguía––”
“Killed him my very first shot,” lied Tiburcio. He would save his golden goose of the golden eggs.
“And the other, an American?”
“Got away with the others, señor.” Again Tiburcio’s reason was obvious. The American, if taken, might tell things.