The Missourian Part 46

"Well, it rained, I tell you. Didn't it rain before Waterloo? Didn't it now?"

Mr. Boone believed in trouble as an antidote for trouble. When he had stirred Driscoll out of his dejection enough to make him want to fight, he deigned to clear the atmosphere of that befogging downpour in Texas.

"You rec'lect, Din, that there war G.o.d we put up in Kirby Smith's place, who so das.h.i.+ngly would lead us on to Mexico?"

"Buckner, yes."

"Him, Simon Bolivar B., whose gold lace glittered as though washed by the dew and wiped with the suns.h.i.+ne----"

"Now, Shanks, drop it!" Driscoll was referring to the editorial pen which Mr. Boone would clutch and get firmly in hand with the least rise of emotion. Against his other conversation, the clutching always became at once apparent.

"Anyhow," said Daniel meekly, "he wilted, did our Simon of B. B.

calibre, and he gave back the command to Smith. And Smith's first order, his very first order, sir, was that the Department, the whole fifty thousand, should march into Shrevepoht and--and _surrender_, by thunder!"

"Dan, you're not going to tell me----"

"That _we_ surrendered, we, the Missourians, the flower of 'em all?

Now s'pose you just wait till Joe Shelby gets back to us in Arkansas, after that conference with the other generals? Then you'll see what _he_ does. He proclaims things, on wall paper. The Missouri Cavalry Division will march to Shrevepoht, will depose Smith for good, will head off the surrender, will lead the other divisions on to Mexico. And we started to do it too. And then, and then--it rained. Rained, sir, till our trains and guns were mired, and we couldn't budge! And all the time we knew that regiment after regiment was stacking arms off there at Shrevepoht. Did Little Joe rave? Opened Job his mouth? He did. His fluency gave the rain pointers. I sho'ly absorbed some myself, me, that have language tanks of my own. Well, I reckon all our hearts pretty near broke. But we had our Missouri general and our Missouri governor, and the Old Brigade just decided to come along anyhow. And we're a coming, Din, we're a coming!"

Driscoll's face went blank. He thought of the scant welcome his homeless comrades would get. But Mr. Boone did not notice. He had only stretched his canvas, a big one, and there was a picture to paint. His long body began to straighten out, and his eyes glowed. From Xenophon to Irving's Astoria, from Hannibal crossing the Alps to Marching Through Georgia, he ransacked both romance and the cla.s.sics for adequate tints, but in vain.

The colors would have to be of his own mixing.

"Din Driscoll," he began solemnly, "_you_ know that devil breed? Of coh'se, you're one of 'em. You're a chunk of brimstone, yourself. And you'll maybe rec'lect they did some fighting off and on. There was that raw company, f'r instance--boys, hardly a one broke in his yoke of oxen yet--and they hadn't even gotten their firearms, but they took a battery with their naked hands, and got themselves all tangled up in the fiery woof of death. But you'll not be rec'lecting that that there Brigade ever _lost_ a gun. And those raids, Din, back into Missouri, a handful back into the Federal country, when men dozed and dropped from their saddles and still did not wake up, and some went clean daft for want of sleep, and fighting steady all around the clock too, fair and square over into Kansas! And there was the night they buried eight hundred!"

In all this Daniel might have said "We," but reportorial modesty forbade.

"And," he went on, gaining momentum, "I don't reckon you'll be forgetting Arkansas, and the ague and rattlesnakes? And how the small-pox swooped down on that camp of cane shacks? And how the quinine gave out, and--and the _tobacco_? Lawd!--And how those boys forgot how to sew patches, their rags being so far gone! And how they made bridles out of bark, and coffee out of corn! And how they kneaded dough in old rubber blankets and cooked it on rocks! Well, Jack, there they were, in Arkansas like that, and the War was over at last, and Missouri was just a waiting for 'em. And then, to think that they had to face square around another way entirely! Din, you'll just try to imagine that there devil breed facing any other way except to'ds home!"

"Don't, Shanks, you----"

"Devils? They were the wildest things that are. It's a mighty good thing they didn't go back. Think of their neighbors across the Kansas line, getting ready for 'em with every sort of legal persecution under the sun, and carpet-bag judges to help! Outlaw decrees? Well, I reckon those decrees will make a few outlaws, all right, and there'll be unsurrendered Johnny Rebs ten years from now. Shelby's boys had the look of it. Your own Jackson county regiment would have flared into desperadoes at sight of a United States marshal. They were all in just that sort o' mood, as they turned their backs on Missouri. And after four years, too! But there, it's a stiff wind that has no turning, so cheer up! _They_ did, as soon as that deluge got done with and they were headed for Mexico, one thousand of 'em. Soldiers mus'n't repine, you know. For them, Fate arrays herself in April's capricious suns.h.i.+ne."

Driscoll had to smile. "Careful, there, Dan, don't stampede."

"I ain't, but if now 'I hold my tongue I shall give up the ghost,' and I want to tell you first that Texas is a handsome state. We--they--were considerable interested all the way through it."

"But, Meagre Shanks, where'd you leave 'em?"

"Back in Monterey, drinking champagne with Fat Jenny. Alas, 'who can stay the bottles of heaven?'"

"Fat--who's she?"

"Now you wait. They've got heaps to do in Texas yet, before they get to Fat Jenny. First, they helped themselves out of their own commissary departments, horses, provisions trains, cannon, everything. Decently uniformed for the first time, and the War over! You should of seen 'em, a forest of Sharpe's carbines, a regular circulating library of Beecher Bibles. There were four Colts and a dragoon sabre and thousands of rounds of ammunition to each man. They had fighting tools to spare, and they cached a lot of the stuff up in the state of Coahuila. And they fed, and got sleek. This ain't editorial, my boy. It's G.o.d's own truth.

Adventures every step of the way only did 'em good. They saved whole towns from renegade looters by just mentioning Shelby's name. They fought all day and danced all night. San Antone was the best. There they gathered in generals, governors, senators, and even Kirby Smith, all yearning to join Old Joe--our Old Joe, who ain't thirty-four yet."

The speaker paused, and when he began again, there was a light ominous of inspiration in his eyes.

"At the Rio Grande," he said, solemnly, "they crossed out of the Confederacy forever, so it was meet and right that there, in midstream, they should consign their old battle-flag to the past. They had not surrendered it, but as a standard it existed for those gallant hearts no more. Woman's loyal hand had bestowed it. Coy victory had caressed its folds mid the powder pall and horror of ten score desperate fields. And now it floated over the last of its followers, ere the waves should close over it forevermore. With bowed heads, they gathered sadly about----"

"Lay it down, Shanks, lay it down," Driscoll pleaded. He was referring again to the pen in hand.

"All right, Din," Boone answered hastily. "Yes, I know, we all got kind of weepy too. No wonder Colonel Slayback wrote some verses. Reckon you can stand just one? This one?

'And that group of Missouri's valiant throng, Who had fought for the weak against the strong-- Who had charged and bled Where Shelby led, Were the last who held above the wave The glorious flag of the vanquished brave, No more to rise from its watery grave!'

"And," he added savagely, "just let any parlor critic smile at the sacred feet of those same lines!"

"Let him once!" said Driscoll. His eyes were moist.

Mr. Boone faithfully traversed the rest of the way with the "Iron Brigade," and no company of errant knights, perhaps, ever had such a junketing as those same l.u.s.ty troopers. No sooner did they set foot in the enchanted land of roses than a damsel in distress, the Republica Mexicana herself, came to them for succor. Or more literally, a dissident governor, backed by the authority of President Juarez, offered Shelby military control of the three northern states and grants in the fabulously rich Sonora mines, if he would hang high his s.h.i.+eld and recruit his countrymen in the republican cause. There is little doubt that General Shelby could have raised an army and become henceforth a power in Mexico, for Was.h.i.+ngton would have smiled on the undertaking and all Texas would have afforded a base of supplies. But the Missourian's Round Table voted it down. They awaited Maximilian's reply which Driscoll was to bring. Perhaps, too, they would have a chance to wage war against the United States again, and that was better than being smiled on.

Henceforth they fought the forlorn damsel herself, fought every foot of the way through desert mesquite thick enough to daunt a tarantula. There were guerrillas, robbers, spies, deserters, and Indian tribes. It was one eternal ambush, incessantly a skirmish, often a pitched battle. They saved a French garrison. They rescued a real maiden by a night attack on an hacienda stronghold, and did it with strictly de rigueur dash and chivalry. Once or twice they were even stung, by some "langourous dusky-eyed scorpion of a saynorita" to fight among themselves, cavalryman's code. Daniel was never one to spoil a romance by mentioning that a tropical maid was faced like a waffle-iron, though more than likely she was. Finally, as a last stroke, Fat Jenny promised to shoot Shelby and hang the rest.

"You've been derogatory about this lady before," Driscoll interposed, "and I want to know who she is."

"She is the English for Jeanningros, the French general at Monterey, who'd heard about those negotiations with the Republica. But Shelby formed in battle line, to storm his old city, and at the same time sent word explaining that he hadn't accepted any offer from the Republica.

So, instead of shooting and hanging, Jenny asked us around for supper.

That's where I left 'em."

"What for?"

"W'y," said Boone in surprise, "to see if you'd gotten here, and to take back Maximilian's answer."

"But what's the use? The Trans-Mississippi went and surrendered."

"Gra-cious, but you're in a vicious humor! Now, here's the use. Instead of fifty thousand, we're only one thousand, I know. But there are hundreds and hundreds of Americans down here like us, and all of 'em wanting service. There's that colony just starting at Cordova near Vera Cruz. But they'd fight, if there was an American to lead them, and more yet 'ud come from the States. Quicker'n that, Old Joe will have a division."

Driscoll ruefully shook his head. "Maximilian wants us," he said, "if we'll give up our arms first."

"If we----"

"If we will surrender, Dan."

Mr. Boone's jaw fell. The phrase that would measure the depth of the proposed ignominy would not come. Finally, he dug from his pocket a bright new gold coin, twenty pesos, and contemplated reflectively the side that bore Maximilian's effigy.

"I've got the cub repohter's superst.i.tion," he said at last. "You get your cards printed," here he tapped the coin significantly, "and you're sure to lose your job--still we might of helped him."

There was nothing, though, for Daniel but to turn back and meet the Brigade. Learning Maximilian's decision, the Missourians would probably join the Cordova colony. Boone reckoned that _he_ would. He discovered that he was tired of fighting. Perhaps the new citizens at Cordova would want an organ, a weekly at least; and already his nostrils were sniffing the pungent, fascinating aroma of printer's ink. Then he asked Driscoll what he thought of doing, now that he was free.

"Don't know," came the reply lonesomely. "Stir around, I guess. There's a flying column leaving this week to capture Juarez. Maybe that'll do me."

CHAPTER II

THE BLACK DECREE