At his command the attendant fetched the gazette, which he took into his own hands and tendered to us, with a polite bow. When we shook our heads over the Spanish text, he waved us back to our seats, and proceeded to translate into French a most extraordinary mess of wild and contradictory rumors regarding Aaron Burr.
The redoubtable Colonel had descended the Ohio with an immense army; he had invaded the Province of Texas; he was marching upon Santa Fe; he had captured New Orleans; he was operating against Pensacola, with a view to the conquest of the Floridas; he had joined forces with the British fleet and had sailed to invest Vera Cruz; he was fighting the Eastern Americanos; no! the atheist Jacobin Jefferson had sent a second army to help him to conquer New Spain. Only the firm stand of the honest and most upright Americano Commander-in-Chief, General Wilkinson, had prevented los hereticos from breaking their sacred pledge by crossing the Sabine River into the disputed territory. Risking the anger of the hypocritical Jefferson, the brave Wilkinson had met the treacherous and ferocious Burr in a terrific battle; had defeated the desperadoes and either slain or captured the would-be conqueror of the domains of His Most Catholic Majesty, King Ferdinand.
So the account ran—a bushel of chaff heaped about a few scant grains of fact. Yet even out of these garbled and fantastic details of an evidently panic-stricken Spanish scribe, we could extract at least an inkling of the truth. There could be no doubt that Colonel Burr had actually embarked upon one or more of his venturesome enterprises, and that there had ensued more or less public agitation, if not an armed conflict.
To my wider knowledge of the Colonel's schemes many things were clear which puzzled and bewildered my friend, and I was not altogether surprised to see by Malgares's look that he understood the situation nearly as well as myself. When, however, at the first opportunity, I sought to obtain an intimation that he had been a sharer in the Mexican end of the great project, he avoided the inquiry with his usual tactful reserve.
For my own part, I concluded that my worst suspicions regarding the treasonable intentions of Colonel Burr were all too true. Evidently relying upon Wilkinson to force hostilities on the Texas border, he had planned to sweep down the Ohio and the Mississippi, with the rallying cry of "War with Spain!" to bring the frontiersmen flocking after him in a vast army. With all the loyal-hearted marching to the conquest of Mexico under Wilkinson and Jackson, it would then have been a simple matter to seize New Orleans, declare a separation of the West from the East, and appeal to the States and Territories west of the Alleghanies to join in creating an empire which should extend westward to the far distant Pacific and south to remote Panama.
That the West was, and for years had been, far too loyal to listen to the traitorous proposal, was not the question. The point was, that, had Wilkinson supported the arch-plotter so far as the seizure of New Orleans, the result would have been a bloody internecine war among our people, with France and England alike gloating upon our dissensions, and waiting, eager-fingered, to tear us asunder at the first opportunity.
So it was that, taking matters at their face value in so far as I could conjecture the facts, I gladly gave General Wilkinson credit for the part he seemed to have played in checkmating the alleged invasion of the lower Mississippi by Burr.
The manner in which our host watched our faces as he read the gazette to us, explained the discourtesy of his first greeting. It was evident that he regarded our expedition as a reconnoitring party sent out by the hated Americanos to explore a road for the expected army of invasion.
For my part, I firmly believe it was in fact so intended by General Wilkinson, who had been known to boast that he could take all New Mexico in a single campaign. But whether or not he had intended to use our discoveries to further the treasonable projects of Burr, I will leave to the verdict of History. At the time, it was enough for me that he had not joined forces with Burr, but, on the contrary, it would seem had averted the possibility of the dashing Colonel's capture of New Orleans.