The Missourian Part 4

What Don Anastasio had said was nothing at all, but being thus urged, he mumbled a negative.

"Not starting to-night?" his questioner repeated. "Now, why don't we?--What?--Lordsake, man, dive! Bring up that voice there for once!"

Murguia sank to the chin in his black coat. Glancing apprehensively at the cavalryman's long arm, he edged away to the farther side of the doorway. Experience had accustomed the ancient trader to despots, but in this cheery youngster of a Gringo the regal t.i.tle was not clear, which simply made tyranny the more irksome. The Gringo was the veriest usurper. He did not justify his sway by the least ferocity. He never uttered a threat. Where, then, was his right to the sceptre he wielded so nonchalantly? Were there only some tangible jeopardy to his pelt, Murguia would have been more resigned. But his latest autocrat was only matter-of-fact, blithely and aggravatingly matter-of-fact.

By every rule governing man's att.i.tude toward man, the Senor Don should have been the bully, and the youngster the cringing sycophant. For since their very odd meeting two weeks before, the tyrant had been in the power of the tyrannized. It began on Murguia's own boat, where Murguia was absolute. Any time after leaving Mobile he had merely to follow his inclinations and order the fellow thrown overboard. Yet it was the soldier boy who had a.s.sumed the ascendancy, and it could not have been more natural were the boat's owner a scullion and the intruder an admiral.

"And why _don't_ we start to-night?" the complacent usurper demanded in that plaintive drawl which so irritated the other. "You went for your pa.s.sports, didn't you get 'em?"

"Si--si, senor."

"Good! Then to-night it is, eh?--Can't you speak out, _my_ gracious!"

"_You_ might go to-night," the trader suggested timidly.

"Alone?--N-o, parting isn't the sweet sorrow it's cracked up to be.

Besides, I don't know the roads, but of course that's nothing to losing a jovial old mate like you, Murgie."

Don Anastasio smirked at the pleasantry. "But _I_ can't go to-night, senor. I--I have to see--someone--first."

The trooper betrayed the least impatience. "Now look here--usurer, viper, blanketed thief, honorable sir, you _know_ I'm in a hurry!"

That his haste could be any concern of Murguia's was preposterous, and Murguia would have liked nothing better than to tell him so. But he did not, and suffered inwardly because somehow he could not. He harbored a dim but dreadful picture of what might happen should the amiable cavalryman actually lose his temper. Loss of patience had menace enough, though the Southerner had not stirred from his lazy posture in the doorway nor overlooked a single contented puff from the Missouri meerschaum.

"I'm sorry," Don Anastasio paid out the hard-found words through his teeth, "but possibly we can leave to-morrow. Will, will that suit Your Mercy, Senor Coronel?"

"Oh perhaps. Anyhow, don't go to forgetting, now, that I'm in a hurry."

Don Anastas...o...b..eathed easier, and he even grew so bold as to recall a certain suspicion he had entertained. "Your errand down here must be of considerable importance, Senor Coronel?" he ventured.

"There you are again--crawling again." It was evident that the trooper's normal condition was a great, hearty, calm good humor.

But the Mexican's shriveled features grew sharper and his moist eyes more prying. His suspicion had tormented him ever since fate had thrown the Confederate in his way. This had happened one stormy night at Mobile. The night in question was pitch dark. The tide was favorable, too, but a norther was blowing, the very same norther that had turned the _Imperatrice Eugenie_ off her course. Murguia's skipper had chosen the hour of midnight for running the Federal blockade outside, and he had already given the order to cast off, when a horseman in a cape overcoat rode to the edge of the wharf.

"Wait there!" the horseman trumpeted through his hand.

It was the first word Murguia had ever heard from his future tyrant, and even then the cool tone of authority nettled him. But he reflected that here might be a pa.s.senger, and a pa.s.senger through the blockade usually meant five hundred dollars in gold. He ordered the plank held for a moment.

"They tell me--whoa, Demijohn!--you are going to Tampico?" hallooed the same voice.

"Yes," Murguia answered, and was going to name his price, when without more ado the cavalier rode across, dismounted on the deck, and tossed his bridle to the first sailor.

"Ca-rai!" sneered the astonished Mexican, "one would think you'd just reached your own barnyard, senor."

"My own barnyard?" echoed the stranger bitterly. "I haven't seen my own barnyard, or anything that is mine, during these four years past. But you were about to start?"

"Not so fast, senor. Fare in advance, seven hundred dollars." Murguia looked for the haggling to come next, but somehow the sniff he heard was not promising.

"Usurer, viper, blanketed thief, benevolent old rascal," the trooper enumerated as courteously as "Senor Don" or "Your Mercy," "you don't surprise me a bit, not when you charge us three thousand dollars gold for freight on a trunk of quinine!"

"G-g-get back on your horse! G-get off this boat!"

But the intruder calmly drew off his great coat, and Murguia saw the b.u.t.ts of pistols at his waist. Yet they had no reference to the removal of the cape. The latter was a simple act of making oneself at home.

"I reckon," said the newcomer cheerily, "there's no question of fare.

Here, I've got a pa.s.s."

By a lantern Murguia read the paper handed him. It was signed: "Jefferson Davis, President C. S. A." Therein Mr. Anastasio Murguia or any other blockade runner was required on demand of the bearer, Lieut.

Col. Jno. D. Driscoll, to transport the said Driscoll to that part outside the Confederacy which might happen to be the blockade runner's destination.

The peevish old man scowled, hesitated. He read the order again, hesitated again, and at last handed it back, his mind made up.

"Have the goodness, senor, to remove yourself from my boat."

But the lieutenant colonel placidly inquired, "Carry any government cotton this trip? No, I know you don't. Then you're in debt to the government? Correct. So I reckon you'll carry me in place of the cotton."

The demand was just. For their golden privileges the blockade runners took a portion of their cargo on government account. But Murguia knew that the army of Northern Virginia must surrender soon. The Confederacy was really at an end, and this would be his last trip. Why, then, pay a dying creditor?

"The favor, senor! Or must I have you kicked off?"

The senor, however, with his charger behind him, was foraging over the deck to find a stall, and in a fury Murguia plucked at his sleeve. But Driscoll wheeled of his own accord to inquire about horse accommodations, and then the Mexican wondered in his timid soul at his own boldness. It loomed before him as unutterably more preposterous than the lone wanderer's preposterous act of taking possession single handed.

Yet the lone wanderer was only gazing down on him very benignly. But what experience of violent life, of cool dealing in death, did poor Don Anastas...o...b..hold on those youthful features! In a panic he realized certain vital things. To evade his debt to a government that could never claim it was very seductive and business-like. But there were the Confederate batteries on the wharf, and a line of torpedoes across the entrance to the bay. There were the Federal cannon of Fort Morgan, just beyond. His pa.s.senger, if rejected, had only to give the word, and there would be some right eager shooting. And as the Southerners shot, in their present mood, they would remember various matters. They would remember the treasure he had wrung from their distress; the cotton bought for ten cents and sold abroad for a dollar; the nitre, the gunpowder, the clothing and medicines, rated so mercilessly dear; the profits boosted a thousand per cent., though an army was starving.

And yet Murguia could not lift his soul from the few hundred dollars of pa.s.sage money. He almost had his man by the sleeve again. But no, there were four hundred odd bales on board. There was _La Luz_, his fleet 20,000 Clyde-built side-wheeler, bought out of the proceeds of a single former trip. Even if torpedoes and cannon missed, the Fort and blockaders outside would be thankful for the alarm, and make sure of him. A few hundred dollars was an amount, but the benignity in Driscoll's whimsical brown eyes meant a great deal more, such for instance, as cotton and steamer and Don Anastasio plunging to the bottom of the bay.

"Oh I s'y, sir," interrupted a voice in vigorous c.o.c.kney, "this 'ere tide ain't in the 'abit o' waitin'. If we go to-night, we go this minute, sir!" It was the skipper, and the skipper's ultimatum.

"W'y yes," drawled the lieutenant colonel, "let's be marching. I forgot to tell you, I'm in a hurry. Come on, Demijohn," and man and horse went in search of beds.

Murguia looked venomous, but the plank was drawn on board.

CHAPTER V

THE STORM CENTRE

"G.o.d forbid I should be so bold as to press to heaven in my young days."

--_t.i.tus Andronicus._

The feathering buckets of the paddle wheels began to turn; and _La Luz_, long, low, narrow, and a racer, moved noiselessly out into the bay. A few yards only, and the loungers on the wharf could neither see nor hear her. Except for the m.u.f.fled binnacle light, there was neither a ray nor a spark. The anthracite gave almost no smoke. The hull, hardly three feet above water amids.h.i.+ps, was "Union color," and invisible at night. The waves slipped over her like oil, without the sound of a splash, almost without breaking. She glided along more and more swiftly.

The silent engines betrayed no hint of their power, though breathing a force to drive a vessel five times as large.

There were many entrances to the bay, and Murguia had had his steamer built of light draft especially, to profit by any outlet offering least danger from the vigilant patrol outside. The skipper had already chosen his course. Because of the gale, he calculated that the blockaders would get a considerable offing, lest they flounder mid the shoal waters insh.o.r.e. He knew too, even if it were not so dark, that a long, foamy line of surf curtained the bay from any watchful eye on the open sea. By the time she reached the beach channels, _La Luz_ had full speed on. Then, knifing the higher and higher waves, she made a dash for it.

For a slender steamer, and in such weather, the risk was desperate. The skipper hoped that the blockaders would never credit him with quite the insanity of it. He held the wheel himself, while beside him his keenest-sighted quartermaster stood guard with a gla.s.s. The agitated owner was there also, huddled in his black shawl, but the binoculars glued to his eyes trembled so that he could hardly have seen a full-rigged armada in broad daylight.