The Missourian Part 63

The battle was short, but of the hottest. Its central point was the little bra.s.s howitzer. Driscoll, Grinders, Bledsoe, the Doc, all four pushed at the carriage or pulled at the trunnion rings, while around them, hindering them, swaying back and forth over rocks and in the ditches, the two forces battled for possession, hand to hand, with six-shooters and clubbed muskets. Grinders fell, cursing angrily.

Bledsoe fell, toppling heavily his great length. The Doc fell. "By the----" he began, but got no further. He was not mistaken this time.

But the gun was turned at last, and a vicious hand jerked the rope.

Powder grains pierced the eyes of the nearest Imperialists. The shot tore through the ma.s.s of them. Yet Driscoll remembered most how wan, how _hungry_, they looked.

"Death to the traitors! a muerte! a mu-erte!"

It was a heavy nasal, hurled from the lungs with that force and venom peculiar to the Spanish tongue. It came from Don Rodrigo, who had pulled the lanyard, and who now pulled it again and again, crazed first with joy, then with rage because the emptied gun would not respond.

While the combatants were so confused together, the tiradores in the upper trenches had to hold their fire, but when the defenders gave way at last, those above could wait no longer. Four thousand and more, they leaped their earthworks, and came charging down the slope on what was left of Driscoll's six hundred.

Grays and brigands faced about, but most of all they looked beyond the enemy's right flank, to the line of the hill's crest there. For just beyond that jagged line and somewhere below Old Brothers and Sisters and the eight other companies must be toiling up. But they would have to appear in the interval of the Imperialists' downward rush. Driscoll turned to his bugler. "Blow, Hanks! Blow like the _very_ devil!"

The blast sounded long and shrill, like a plaintive wail. The six hundred pumped lead up the hill mechanically, but their hearts were echoing the clarion's cry for help, and rather than on the foe sweeping down over the rocks to crush them, their eyes were strained on the sun-emblazoned line against the sky. But the parson was a man. At last, just over the slope's crest, a head appeared, a cherubic head with spectacles, and two arms waved for haste to others behind. And instantly more heads bobbed up, and more yet, until the jagged line was fairly encrusted with mouse-colored sombreros, like barnacles on a stranded keel.

From where they were the new comers began their work, lying flat on their stomachs. Once over the ridge, down each man fell and joined the chorus of musketry. Their fusilade thickened to a blanket of flame, closely woven. The host rus.h.i.+ng down the slope forgot the tales that were told of the marvelous sixteen-shot rifles. They thought instead that an army of Republicans, and not a man less, were upon their flank.

For how else could volleys be so well sustained, how else so deadly? And how fast they themselves were dropping! The thing was not like bullets, but as the earth caving under them. The charge turned to panic. They plunged on downward, indeed, and even sheer into the cross fire of Driscoll's six-shooters and the one howitzer. But it was headlong flight. At the trench they did not stop to grapple, but fought their way through and fled on down the hill, on across the gra.s.sy plain, nor paused until they had crowded pell-mell into the main Imperialist army drawn up before the Alameda.

Maximilian and his resplendent staff were there at the Alameda. The Emperor was perhaps less astounded than they.

"Ai, general, if you _had_ known how Tampico fell!" he said to Miramon.

Yet neither was actually dismayed. The Cimatario and five thousand men had succ.u.mbed to a thousand or fifteen hundred daredevils. It was hard enough to believe, in all conscience. But the daredevils could be dislodged, and they must be, at once. Miramon's orders rose sharply and quick, and the Empire sprang to obey. The Alameda batteries were trained on the hill, and a few moments later the guns on the roof of the La Cruz monastery were also. At the same time, the army, the entire Imperialist reserve, battalion after battalion in close, hurried ranks, set out across the gra.s.sy plain, straight toward the Cimatario's front slope.

Foot, horse, artillery, the concentrated might of the Austrian's sceptre, was being hurled against a handful of jaded warriors.

Maximilian flushed with something like shame at the thought.

Back on the slope Driscoll cried, "No, no, keep to the trenches, you fellows! This ain't _our_ promenade."

And soon, when screaming comets began to fill the air and burst around them, they were glad of the ditches. There they waited, smoking, spitting tobacco against the torrid rocks, but with sullen eyes on the army moving nearer and nearer. Where, all this morning, was Escobedo, who, with his thousands of Republicans on the north of the town had taken no thought of the Republican stress on the south? He had not fired a shot. Yet surely he must know by this time. But no matter. Over a hundred outlaws were left, and nearly a thousand Grays. Missourians, brigands, and guerrillas of Michoacan, they were a dangerous blend.

"Got a match, Harry?" asked Driscoll of the Kansan, as he filled his cob pipe.

They _had_ to wait, you see. Yet haste was all they would have begged of the advancing Imperialist host.

The red jackets of the Dragoons--the few that were left--brightly dotted the van of the attacking thousands. On either side rode the Second and Fourth Lanciers. Behind tramped the battalions of Iturbide, of Celaya, and regiments of the line. They gained the foot of the hill and the cavalry were dismounting before they drew fire. The baptism had a sharpshooter deadliness, even at that distance, but the Imperialists waited tentatively. No, there was but one volley. When the second came, it was only after an interval long enough for reloading. Officers and men glanced at one another more hopefully. The terrified fugitives were of course mistaken, they thought. For the force above could not be large, nor yet possess the mysterious sixteen-shot rifles. The a.s.surance gave the buoyancy of relief. To charge against carbines that made each man as sixteen were uncanny, too much like challenging the Unknown. But a thousand men who fired only every two or three minutes--an antagonist like that was quite well known to their philosophy. So breathing hard, they valiantly marched up the hill. They suffered cruelly under the scattered fusillades, yet were not materially resisted. At last they were near enough, and the bugles sounded for the final rush.

Now what was odd, the Republicans stopped firing altogether. But they were waiting for shorter range, and a moment later, at a hundred paces, their reopening volley had all the clockwork dispatch of platoon drill.

Yet the Imperialists took the dose as a thing expected, and sprang over their wounded to gain the trenches. They required only the lull of reloading. But instantly a second volley prolonged the first. The column staggered, and faces blanched. In a sudden despair they realized the enemy's tactics, for the enemy did have those terrible rifles, after all. From the trenches a low sheet of flame had spread, searing the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of rank after rank that pressed against its edge. Scarlet-coated Dragoons, the last of them, flecked the rocks, and over them fell green uniformed troopers, as gra.s.s will cover a b.l.o.o.d.y field, and the Munic.i.p.al Guards, swaying up from behind, paid out a sprinkling of blue--a ghastly pousse-cafe, as one grim jester described it afterward.

The long ma.s.sed lines wavered.

"They've stopped, they've stopped!" cried Rodrigo. "Now we'll close with them, eh, senor--por Dios, _now_!"

"All you fellows," shouted Driscoll, "just fill your rifles while they wait. Stopped nothing, Rod! And anyhow, who'd hold the hill if we left it? Who?"

The answer came at once, and in dramatic form. One of the pickets stationed on the flank ran among them.

"There's another big slew of 'em a-coming!" he yelled excitedly.

"Yonder, over yonder!"

Driscoll rose and followed the man to the east slope. From there he beheld an overpowering force, advancing diagonally across the llano below. It came by the Carretas road, which skirted Queretaro on that side, and it was hurrying toward the Cimatario. The colonel of Grays watched them anxiously through his gla.s.ses.

"Shucks," he said at last, "the fight's over. It's Escobedo. He's sent his reserve. Don't you see those black shakos, Jim, and those gray coats? They're the Cazadores de Galeana, and the best yet. Now we'll have someone to hold the hill!"

But getting back to the trenches, Driscoll saw that the help might not come soon enough. For however the Imperialists squandered their lives, they would yet overcrowd death. Some had already gained the first trench, and were there engaged hand to hand, with sabre and pistol. In the trenches above the Grays steadily fed the molten flame. But Driscoll chose the in-fighting, and naturally became himself the centre of the hottest patch.

"Help's here! in five minutes, just five minutes!" he spoke right and left to his men, as a carpenter will converse and hammer at the same time. For the outnumbered Grays it was the help arrived already.

The Imperialist cannon had of necessity ceased firing, so what should be the consternation of the attacking column to have a sh.e.l.l fall among them from the rear! All eyes turned, and a murmur of panic rose. It was not that their own batteries had made a mistake, but that there had not been any mistake. The reserve sent by Escobedo, hearing the battle, had wheeled and rushed straight down the centre of the plain on the chance of giving quicker a.s.sistance. Once in sight of the trenches, though still considerably to the right of the hill, they had unlimbered a gun, while cavalry and infantry pushed on to the rescue. Not to be caught between trenches and plain, the Imperialists acted with soldiery decision. Their clarions sounded retreat.

"Now it's _our_ turn!" shouted Driscoll, and with the parson and the Kansan and the outlaw chief, and guerrillas and Missourians pouring out of their ditches, he chased down hill the concentrated might of an Empire. So closely was that chasing performed that pistol flashes burned into standards and uniforms.

Maximilian and Miramon and the high officers of the realm were still at their post of observation in front of the Alameda. For the third time that morning they faced Imperial cohorts hurled back upon them by a man named Driscoll. Miramon reproached himself bitterly. His plans to intercept Escobedo's reserve on the north had failed. The Emperor's pallid features were drawn with the tensity of a big loser. Yet in the soft blue eyes there flashed a chivalrous wonder at an enemy's valiant deed.

On the llano fugitives and pursuers mingled as one in the human wave of confusion. Escobedo's cavalry had overtaken the melee, and blended with the rear of the fleeing column, until it seemed likely that both must enter the town together. But a charge of grape, fired obliquely from the Alameda, mowed a path between them--a Spartan business, for it reaped Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to draw back to the Cimatario.

As Escobedo's reserve occupied the hill, Driscoll marched his own force behind the same to get his horses there. But the mustangs of the brigands had disappeared, and far to the southwest were the brigands themselves, moving swiftly over the plain toward the mountains. They hardly numbered two-score now, and at that distance seemed a few men herding a drove of empty saddles. The late indignant patriot, Don Rodrigo, had changed back to outlaw. As another Cid, he might have looked for pardon from a grateful country, but possibly he feared the Roman justice of Juarez too much to risk it. Besides, a man will not lightly give up his career. That same night Rodrigo lay again among the sierras, quite ready for the first bullion convoy or beautiful marchioness pa.s.sing by.

Sh.e.l.ls and minie b.a.l.l.s were yet dropping perfunctorily, and the llano between hill and town was still a dangerous place enough, but scattered here and there were a few of both sides looking for their wounded, and often themselves going down before the aim of sharpshooters. Stiffening bodies lay under the trampled gra.s.s in every varied horror of mutilation, and gla.s.sy eyes peered unseeing upward through the stalks, like the absurd and ghastly contrast of a horrible dream. But among them were the stricken living in as varied an agony, of raw wounds stung by gnats, of pain cutting deep to vitality, of thirst, of the broiling sun, of a buzzing fly, or of an intolerable loneliness there with death.

Groans rose over the plain, and guided the searchers. Driscoll had already found many of his men in this way. Once he heard his own name.

The voice was weak, but there was something vaguely familiar to it, and involuntarily he held his pistol against treachery as he parted the gra.s.s and revealed a wounded man at his feet. It was a piteously famished body that raised itself a little by one hand. It was a soul-tenanted death-head that crooked gruesomely down on the shoulder and lifted its eyes to Driscoll's in greeting. They were glowing coals, those eyes, glowing with the virile fire of twenty men, however wasted the face or tightly drawn the yellow parchment skin.

"Murgie!"

Driscoll's exclamation was a shudder rather than the surprise of recognition. What could it be that had grown so--so _terrible_ in the weazen, craven miser! And to find the abject little coward on a battlefield, and wounded! An occasional bomb even then screeched overhead. And he was clothed in uniform, a soldier's uniform, he, Don Anastasio!

"Gra-_cious!_" Driscoll muttered.

More and more stupefying, the uniform was not Republican, but Imperialist. There were the green pantaloons with red stripes, the red jacket, the white shoes, the white kepi, of the Batallon del Emperador--a ludicrous martial combination, but pathetic on an aged, withered man. The Batallon del Emperador? Driscoll remembered. They were the troop that had surrounded Maximilian during the recent battle in front of the Alameda, and Murguia had fallen on the very spot. The venomous Republican was then become one of the Emperor's bodyguard!

As the Republican, so also was the coward gone. The gaunt little old Mexican seemed oblivious of peril, as fever blinds one to every nearest emotion. There was even a grimness in the s.h.i.+fting gaze. And a certain merciless capacity, born of unyielding resolve--born of an obsession, one might say--was there also. He could have been some great military leader, cruel and of iron, if those eyes were all. Little shriveled Don Anastasio, he had no sense of present danger, nor of the red blood trickling.

"That's bad, that," said Driscoll, overcoming his repugnance. "Here, I'll get you taken right along to our surgeons."

But Murguia shrank from the offer as though he feared the Republicans of all monsters.

"No, no," he protested feebly, yet with an odd ring of command. "Some one on--on my side will find me."

"But you called?" Driscoll insisted.

"Yes, you--have heard from Rodrigo Galan? He was to have sent you a--to have sent you something for me."

More and more of mystery! Rodrigo had said that Driscoll would see Murguia to give him the ivory cross, and so it had come to pa.s.s. But the battle, the old man's wound, surely these things were not prearranged only that a trinket might be delivered.

"How was I to see you?" Driscoll asked abruptly.

Murguia started, and there was the old slinking evasion.

"There, there," said Driscoll hastily. "Don't move that way, you'll bleed to death! Here, take it, here it is."

Murguia clutched the ivory thing in his bony fingers.