The Missourian Part 72

"_You?_ Now--now to what particular wrong in _your_ case, senor, does the Republic stand thus indebted?"

Juarez put the question lightly, even patronizingly. But his steadfast gaze had not once left his gaunt and battered visitor. By design, too, he had not asked a second time who the Chaparrito was, because he saw, or felt, that the old man knew, though former emissaries from that mysterious source had not known. And Juarez meant to possess the secret.

But with his casual irony he never looked for any such kindling of memory as then flashed deep in the cavernous sockets opposite him. The eyes of the aged man glowed and darkened, glowed and darkened, and seemed the very breathing of some famished beast. It was a thing to startle even Benito Juarez, who during many, many years had learned the meaning of civil war. The President leaped to his feet, pointing a finger.

"You are," he cried, "yes, _you_ are the Chaparrito!--No?--Yes! Ha, I've struck, I've struck!"

He had indeed. The colossal guile and intellect and will, the giant whom men in awe called El Chaparrito, was only old, withered Anastasio Murguia. But the astute Juarez _knew_ that he was right. He knew it in that one look of consuming, conquering hate. He knew the giant in that hate. The feeble flesh, Anastasio Murguia, was an incident. Yet even so, only the President's tenacity held him to where his instinct had leapt. For under discovery Murguia was changed to a huddled, abject creature, stammering denial. Yet it must be true, it must. The strangest, the most weird of contrasts in the same soul and body--yet it must, it _was_ true!

And Murguia? He might have asked for reward, and had it. But his was rankest despair. His work was not finished, his goal not attained. And now his most potent instrument of all, the Chaparrito, was miserably identified in his own self, was taken from him.

Juarez rose and touched his shoulder, "Come," he said, "there's much too much tension here. Now then, sit down, so. Let me see, you said your name was--yes, Murguia. But--why, Dios mio, that's the Huasteca miser!

Well, well, well, and so you are that rich old hacendado who never gave even a fanega of corn to Republic or French either, unless frightened into it? But hombre, we've had _big_ sums from the Chaparrito, and all unasked!"

And yet must it still be true, yet must even this contrast accord. El Chaparrito had indeed given munificently. But in each case it was to bridge a crisis. As the shrewdest general he knew a vital campaign, and aided, if need be. But on a useless one the Republic's soldiers might starve, might freeze, might bleed and die, without ever the most n.i.g.g.ardly solace ever reaching them from El Chaparrito. Economy was applied to vengeance, and made it unspeakably grim.

"Once though," Juarez pursued, "you all but lost your Maximilian? I mean last fall when he started for the coast. He could have escaped to Europe."

"I know," said Murguia quietly, "but I was near him. If he had not turned back, I would have done it myself."

"It?"

"The justice which Your Excellency has just postponed three days."

"Dios mio, but our Chaparrito is a dangerous person! He'd have to be locked up if Maximilian were pardoned."

"But--but Your Excellency will not pardon him!"

"To be sure, I had forgotten. I am to be given a memory. Well?"

"Your Excellency remembers, he remembers Zacatecas?"

"Last February? Certainly I do. Miramon came, but a warning from El Chaparrito, from you, came first, and a last time I escaped. As it was, I was reported captured, and I sometimes wonder what Maximilian would have done had that report been true."

"If I should tell you, senor?"

"Ah, that is beyond even you, since Maximilian has never had the chance to decide my fate."

"But he did decide, senor. He got word that you were taken at Zacatecas, and at once he sent orders to Miramon as to your treatment. But Miramon was already defeated, already fleeing to Queretaro."

"And the orders, the orders from Maximilian?"

"They never arrived. They were intercepted. They--yes, here they are, but before reading them, will Your Excellency promise to imagine himself in Miramon's power?"

"I would, naturally. Come, senor, hand them over."

It made curious reading, that weather-blotched dispatch. For Don Benito Juarez it was reading as curious as a man may ever expect to come by. In the handwriting of his prisoner, he read his own death sentence.

"Your--Your Excellency sees?" Murguia stammered hungrily.

"H'm, what, for example?"

"Why, that--that Maximilian would not have pardoned?"

"On the contrary, senor mio, that is precisely what the generous Maximilian did intend. Listen--Miramon was 'to delay execution until His Majesty should pa.s.s upon it.'"

"No--no, Your Excellency, he would not have----"

"O ho, so you think you've missed your last stroke! You think that there is no memory for me in this dispatch! But don't whine so, because, man, there is, there is! It may not be the memory of my intended death, but it is the memory of--intended insult. Oh, what a patriot he must have thought me, this good, regenerating prince! He had already offered to make me chief justice. But this time he would have saved me from his own Black Decree. And I would have been touched by his clemency? I would have accepted, the grateful tears streaming from my eyes? And thus I would be regenerated? It sounds beautiful. It sounds like the chivalrous Middle Ages, when there were Black Princes along with the Black Decrees.

My liege lord _he_ would have been, but my liege Patria, what of her?--Well, well, well, he has three days in which to understand me better, and to think of his own regeneration a little."

"Then," cried Murgia, limping gleefully toward him, "then there will be no pardon?"

"I see," said Juarez, suddenly cold and very calm, "I am now corrupted.

I am now safe, like the others. Take that chair, wait!"

Saying which the Presidente left his desk, clapped his hands for the orderly, and seated himself near the window. To the orderly he said, "Go to the diligence office across the Plaza. Ask for Colonel Driscoll, the American officer who commands the escort of the two lawyers. Say that I wish to see him here at once."

When Driscoll appeared, Juarez put to him this question, "Colonel--I'll say 'General' whenever you decide to be a citizen among us--Colonel, can you reach Queretaro early to-morrow morning by riding all night?"

"Not with my own horse, sir. He's getting old, and deserves better."

"Then it's all right, senor. You will take any horse you want. I have telegraphed to stop the execution, but there's been no reply. You must therefore see General Escobedo yourself. Look on my desk. Do you find a packet there?"

"Yes."

"Sealed? Well, break it open. Now read the contents to my visitor here."

Driscoll unfolded a long sheet of foolscap, and began to read. Murguia the while fidgeted in an agony, but listening further, his limbs grew tense, and a hideous joy overspread his face.

"'But at sunrise of the nineteenth you will execute the sentence already approved.'"

The prisoners were not to be deceived by false hopes. There would be no further appeal. The last, the final decision, had been made.

"I have signed it, I believe, Colonel Driscoll?"

"Yes."

"Then seal it again, and hurry! Good-bye, sir, good-bye."

When Driscoll was gone, the Benemerito of America turned to the grinning hyena-like old man who was his visitor. His own dark features were pa.s.sionless, impenetrable.

"You observe, senor," he said, "that Justice does not require corrupting, nor even a memory. So let El Chaparrito add this to his philosophy, that he need not boast again of an infallible spur to civic loyalty, for he will never find it, nor I. And yet--there is patriotism."

CHAPTER XIX