The Missourian Part 71

"Oh senor, what's the use? Let him go!"

The keen black eyes regarded her quizzically. "Do you know," he said, "this is the second time I've heard that question to-day? One of our American officers had himself put in command of the escort for Maximilian's two lawyers here, and now I believe he did it simply because he too wanted to know, 'What's the use?' It was anti-climax, and a wet blanket over the fervid eloquence of the two lawyers. But nevertheless, he hit the one argument."

"Yes, yes!"

"In a word, why not brush aside our archduke? He's harmless, now, he's insignificant? Why not take from him the only dignity left, that of dying?"

"Of course, Senor Juarez! Of course!"

"And at the same time win bright renown for ourselves, instead of what will be called harsh cruelty?"

"Surely!"

The smile vanished. The large mouth closed tightly.

"No," spoke the judge of iron. "He dies! That is the truest mercy, a mercy to those who might otherwise follow him here. And we, senorita, we have already suffered enough from Europe."

"But the other two?" pleaded Jacqueline. "They are Mexicans."

"They are that, por Dios, and they make me proud of my race. Miramon, Mejia, they are the leaven. They redeem Lopez, they redeem Marquez, they redeem the deserters who now so largely form my armies, who before had deserted me for the French invasion. By the signal example of these two men to die to-morrow, the world shall know that Mexicans are not all traitors. And as we grow, we Mexicans, we may grow beyond the empty loyalty of glowing Spanish words. Remembering such an example, we may come to be, in our very hearts, breathing things of honor. We have been shackled because of infamy during the last centuries. Can you wonder, then, that we use the treacherous weapon of the Conquistadores?--But that's apart. The loyalty of Miramon and Mejia has been loyalty to an invader, a wrong their country will not forgive. But our cultured gentleman of Europe, our vain fool who would regenerate the poor Indito, he will perhaps not feel so ashamed of us, not when he has two such companions in death, and not when he learns, though painfully, that the rod of Mexican justice respects neither immunity nor privilege of birth.

There, senorita, I've had to talk more about this one individual than about the hundreds of others who have been punished for much less than he."

"But it must be terrible to die, senor. And _he_ doesn't realize, while a delay of only a few days----"

"Would suffice for his escape?"

Jacqueline reddened guiltily. "No, to prepare for his end," she said.

The Presidente smiled tolerantly. "Never fear," he answered first her confusion, "our justice stands committed, and to wink at escape now would be cowardly. Yet, whether you meant it or not, you are right, and the execution stands postponed until the nineteenth. A doomed man may learn much in three days to comfort him--on his way. But the criminal of all is lacking."

"Marquez, you mean?"

"U'm, him also. But I was thinking of Louis Napoleon, _and_ his wife."

The order of postponement, being openly telegraphed to Escobedo at Queretaro, was known at once in San Luis, and caused a fury of excitement. For none doubted but that it meant eventual pardon. The tender hearted rejoiced. The rabid ones muttered. The wise shook dubious heads. And even as Jacqueline and Berthe were hurrying back to Queretaro in the canvas-covered coach, another caller was admitted roundly on the president's privacy, without so much as being announced. Juarez wondered if his orderly had gone crazy, for the newcomer thus obsequiously presented looked to be a species of ancient vagabond.

"Well, what is it?" the President asked, frowning heavily. He was curiously irritated. "Stay," he interposed, "those dusty, muddy rags you have on, that green and red, that's not a Republican uniform?"

"It's of the Batallon del Emperador," replied the stranger, unabashed.

"Bless me the saints! Well, well, well, I suppose you, too, want to save your Maximilian. But how does it happen that you're not under guard yourself?"

For answer the old man came nearer. He limped feebly, and the while he unb.u.t.toned his coa.r.s.e red jacket. Juarez watched him sluggishly, but with a hand upon a revolver under the papers on his desk. The stranger, however, drew forth nothing more sensational than five or six square bits of parchment. Yet these aroused the President more than a weapon could have done. They were blank, except at the bottom, and there the President read his own signature, "Benito Juarez, Libertad y Reforma."

"Your--Your Excellency remembers?"

"How well!" The admission came involuntarily. Juarez was laboring under an emotion that he could not at first control. He stared at his visitor in a new wonder. So gaunt, so hollow, so utterly insignificant! The President's wonder grew.

"You--you gained entrance here by one of these slips?" he questioned sharply. The old man nodded. "And it was countersigned by----"

"Si senor, by El Chaparrito. The slip said, 'Admit bearer at once.'"

"Then I cannot blame my orderly! But who are you?"

"Anastasio Murguia, to serve Your Mercy."

"Bien, Senor Murguia, and now will you explain what no other messenger from our unknown friend has done? Who--who is El Chaparrito?"

But, like the wretched messengers who had gone before, Anastasio Murguia only shrugged his shoulders blankly. "Your Excellency does not know El Chaparrito?" he asked. "And yet you trusted him, a stranger, with your signature?"

There was a crafty stress on his words.

"Ah, senor," Juarez placidly inquired, "what if a chief magistrate did not know when to trust? You are to be informed, then, that one year ago last October, at Chihuahua, I was saved from a French flying column by an Indito. The poor wretch had run across the desert with his warning.

But he could prove nothing. He couldn't even tell who sent him, except that it was a short gentleman, a senor chaparro. Yet it was well for the Republic that I took his word and fled. Later, when I reached the Rio Grande, and he wanted my signature to some blank squares of parchment, which he was to take back to his senor chaparro--well, senor, I trusted again. That Indito in breech-clout obtained my autograph some twenty times over."

The President, however, might have added that every Republican officer was advised first to test any warning on any bit of parchment signed "Benito Juarez." Yet, as a matter of fact, there came to be such magic in the name of El Chaparrito that the name of Juarez thereto was only needed as a guarantee that the lesser name was genuine.

"Now, then, Senor Emissary," said the President, "what danger hangs over our Republic this time?"

"None, senor. I return the parchment squares left over. El--El Chaparrito has no more thoughts for the Republic. He thinks," and Murguia ground his knuckles into the desk top, "he thinks of no one, of no one--except Maximilian! And he has never thought of aught else. The Republic? Bah, the Republic was only his tool, Senor Presidente. Only his tool, but the tool needed sharpening. They say that's the way with the guillotine, eh, Senor Presidente?"

"But hombre--No, our unseen friend of the Republic, our Chaparrito, would not ask for Maximilian's pardon?"

"_Pardon!_"--It was fairly a cry of rage--"Yet you, Senor Presidente, _you_ postpone the execution! _You_ mean to pardon him!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, I--I think so. But you shall not, Senor Presidente. I come to, to----"

"Now that's curious. Possibly I, too, am to be sharpened into a kind of guillotine, eh, senor?"

"All the others were," Murguia returned stubbornly. "That is, all except one."

"Ha, then El Chaparrito found one man who was incorruptible?"

"Yes. But still Your Excellency is mistaken. El Chaparrito did not use money to win his agents. That, senor, is the unsafest way of all."

"You would tell me, senor, that El Chaparrito had a safe way?"

"Yes, and it was absolute. He awakened memory, the memory, Senor Presidente, of wrongs. For example, there was Your Excellency's savior in breech-clout. He once lived in a forest village down in the Huasteca.

One night Dupin came and burned the huts, and the Indito's family perished with other women and children there. That village alone gave the Chaparrito many another messenger or spy, but memories left by the Empire were plentiful enough everywhere, and cheap. The Chaparrito simply drafted them, that was all. But once his system failed. Yet--well the man in that case was an American, and _they_ are liable to be exceptions to any rule, to any pa.s.sion. But in the end he was safe enough too, though something else, that I can't understand, made him so."

"And what did he do, this American?"

"He took me to Escobedo."

"And you?"

"I took Lopez. That same night Queretaro fell."