When Ruperto Rivas, gazing through that same telescope he had given Florence Kearney to make survey of the valley of Mexico, cried out, “La goleta!” every eye around him brightened, every heart beat joyously.
Still more rejoiced were they when, after an hour’s tacking against the land breeze, the goleta got inside the estuary of the stream, and working up, brought to by the edge of the mangroves.
Unencumbered with heavy baggage, they were all soon aboard, and in three days after debarked at the port of Panama. Thence crossing the Isthmus to Chagres, another sea-going craft carried them on to the city, where they need no longer live in fear of Mexico’s despot.
Back to his old quarters in New Orleans had Don Ignacio repaired; again under the ban of proscription, his estates sequestrated as before. So, too, those of the Condesa Almonté.
But not for all time, believed they. They lived in hope of a restoration.
Nor were they disappointed; for it came. The pronunciamento delayed was at length proclaimed, and carried to a successful issue. Once again throughout the land of Anahuac had arisen a “grito,” its battle cry “Patria y Libertad!” so earnestly and loudly shouted as to drive the Dictator from his mock throne; sending him, as several times before, to seek safety in a foreign land.
Nor were the “Free Lances” unrepresented in this revolutionary struggle; instead, they played an important part in it. Ere it broke out, they who had fled the country re-entered it over the Texan border, and rejoining their brethren, became once more ranged under the leadership of Captain Ruperto Rivas, with Florence Kearney as his lieutenant, and Cris Rock a sort of attaché to the band, but a valuable adjunct to its fighting force.
Swords returned to their scabbards, bugles no longer sounding war signals, it remains out to speak of an episode of more peaceful and pleasanter nature, which occurred at a later period, and not so very long after. The place was inside the Grand Cathedral of Mexico, at whose altar, surrounded by a throng of the land’s élite, bells ringing, and organ music vibrating on the air, stood three couples, waiting to be wedded.
And wedded they were! Don Ruperto Rivas to the Condesa Almonté, Florence Kearney to the Doña Luisa Valverde, and—José to Pepita.