Читать книгу The Missourian - Eugene P. Lyle - Страница 9

“JOHN DINWIDDIE DRISCOLL–THE MISSOURIAN”

“His cheeks were smooth, but they were tight and hard and

brown from the weathering of sun and blizzard”

39Various items on the Luz struck the trooper as amusing. There was the incongruity of his seven-hundred-dollar cabin, the secession of his stomach from the tranquillity of the federal body organic, and finally, this running away from somebody. But he quickly perceived that the last was serious enough. The skipper lowered his glasses, and shook his perky head a number of times. “Who said life was all beer and skittles?” he demanded defiantly, and glared at Driscoll as though he had. But getting no answer, he seemed mollified, as though this proved that the man who had said it was an imbecile. Murguía, by the way, had come to hate no truth more soulfully than the palpable shortcoming of life in the matter of beer and skittles. And now it was borne in upon him again, for the skipper announced, definitely and with an oath, that they’d have to begin throwing the cargo overboard.

Poor Don Anastasio behaved like a man insane. He wrung his hands. He protested stoutly, then incoherently. He whined. He glared vengefully at the dread sail on the horizon, and then he shrank from it, as from a flaming sword. And as it grew larger, his eyeballs rounded and dried into smaller discs. But at once he would remember his darling cotton that must go to the waves, and the beady eyes swam again in moisture, like greenish peas in a sickly broth. Avarice and terror in discord played on the creature as the gale through the whimpering cordage.

“No ’elp for it, sir,” said the skipper, bridling like a bantam. “Didn’t I try to save my cargo, off Savannah, and didn’t I 40 lose my sloop to boot? Didn’t I now, sir?–Poor old girl, mebby she’s our chaser out ’ere this very minute.”

“Try–try more turpentine,” said Murguía weakly.

“Yes, or salt bacon, sir, or cognac, or the woodwork, or any blarsted thing I see fit, sir!” The little skipper hit out each item with a step downward to the deck, and five minutes later Murguía groaned, for bale after bale came tumbling out of the hold. Then over they began to go, the first, the second, the third, and another, and another, and after each went a moan from Anastasio. He leaned through the window to see one tossing in the waves, then suffered a next pang to see the next follow after. It was an excruciating cumulus of grief. The trooper regarded him quizzically. Destruction of merely worldly goods had become routine for him. He returned to his contemplation of the two funnels.

The skipper came back, dripping with pray. “The wind’s changin’,” he said, “and that’ll beat down the sea some.”

“Reckon they’ll get us?” Driscoll asked.

Murguía took the query as an aggravation of woe, and he turned wrathfully on the trooper. “Don’t you see we’re busy?”

“I see you’re very damn sullen, gra-cious me!–Reckon they will, captain?”

“We’ll be eatin’ a United States of America supper, chained, sir.”

“Now look here,” said Driscoll plaintively, “I don’t want to get caught.”

“But I hope as you’ll bide with us, sir?”

“Still, I was just thinking–now that smoke––”

“And I’m a thinkin’ you don’t see much smoke. We’re keepin’ out o’ sight as long as God’ll let us.”

“But, Captain, why not smoke up–big? Just wait now–this ain’t any of my regiment, I know that–but listen a minute anyway. Well, once or twice when we were in a fix, in camp, 41say, and we knew more visitors were coming than was convenient, w’y, we’d just light the campfires so they would smoke, and then–meantime–we’d light out too. Old Indian trick, you know.”

The skipper was first impatient. But as that did no good, he cocked himself for a laugh. Then his mouth puckered to a brisk attention, and at the last word he jumped to his feet. “Damme!” he said, and went thumping down the steps again. He splashed through the water on deck, minding the stiff wind not at all, and dived into the engine-room.

“Soft coal!” gasped Murguía with relief.

It was pouring from the stacks in dense black clouds.

The captain returned. “We’ll try to save the rest o’ that ’ere cotton, sir,” he said.

He looked out at the trembling smoke that betrayed their course so rashly, and from there back to the pursuer on the horizon. He waited a little longer, carefully calculating; then sent an order down the tube to the engineer. The dampers were shut off, and the fuel was changed to anthracite. Soon the smoke went down, and a hazy invisible stream puffed from the funnels instead. The Luz swung at right angles to her former course. The paddles threshed hopefully, and on she sped, leaving no track. The skipper gazed back at the lowering line, which ended abruptly on their port and trailed off toward the horizon with a telegraphy of deceit for the distant sail.

“You soldiers, colonel,” he announced, “don’t ’ave no monopoly on tricks and gammon, I’m a thinkin’. But I s’y, w’at if you and me go down to my cabin and have a noggin?”

Thus La Luz ran her last blockade, and came safely into port. She reached Tampico some two days before the Impératrice Eugénie. Whereupon Din Driscoll, as he was called anywhere off the muster roll, informed Don Anastasio that he 42 would continue with him on into the interior. And as seen already, Murguía humbly excused delay, though his guest was not invited, not wanted, and cordially hated besides. That meek smirk of Don Anastasio’s was the absurdest thing in all psychology.

Yet what perhaps aggravated the old man most was curiosity. He craved to know the errand of his young despot. In the doorway of the Tampico mesón he still hovered near, and ventured more questions.

“How was it that, that you happened to be sent, señor?” he asked.

“Well now,” observed the trooper, “there you go figuring it out that I was sent at all.”

“It must have been–uh, because you know Spanish. Are you a–a Texan, Señor Coronel?”

“They raised me in Missouri,” said the colonel. “But I learned to talk Pan-American some on the Santa Fé trail. We had wagon trains out of Kansas City when I was a good sight younger.”

“I thought,” said the old man suspiciously, “that perhaps you learned it with Slaughter’s army, along the Rio Grande. Slaughter, he’s near Brownsville yet, isn’t he?”

“Is he?”

“With about twenty-five thousand men?”

“Lord, I’ve clean forgot, not having counted ’em lately.”

“Where did you come from then, when you came to Mobile?”

“W’y, as I remember, from Sand Spring, Missouri, near the Arkansas line.”

A more obscure crossroads may not exist anywhere, but its bare mention had a curious effect on the prying Don Anastasio. In the instant he seemed to cringe before his late passenger.

“Then you–Your Mercy,” he exclaimed, “belongs to Shelby’s Brigade?”

43The Missourian nodded curtly. His questioner was extraordinarily well informed.

“And, and how many men has Shelby at Sand Spring?”

“Oh, millions. At least millions don’t appear to stop ’em any.”

“But señor, how, how many Confederates are there altogether west of the Mississippi?”

Driscoll, though, had had enough. “Look here Murgie,” he said, “if you keep on crawling, you’ll crawl up on a mongoose one of these days, and those things have teeth.”

He might have gone further into natural history, but a sudden commotion down the street interrupted. “It’s a race!” he cried. “No–Lordsake, if they ain’t fighting!”

He drew off his coat, took the pipe from his mouth, and shoved it into his hip pocket, all with the air of a man who has smoked enough and must be getting to work. His brown eyes quickened. It was akin to the satisfaction a merchant feels who scents an unexpected order. He was ready to deliver the goods instantly. His heavy boots went clattering and his great spurs jangling, and soon he was stooping over two men rolling in the dust. But he straightened and thrust his hands into his pockets. He was disappointed. The unexpected order was a hoax. The combatants were one to one, and he could not fairly enter into competition. Then an unaccustomed method for getting into the bidding occurred to him. He might be peacemaker. He leaned over again, to separate them. Each long-fingered hand reached for a collar. Yet even as he caught hold one of his prizes went limp in his grasp. He pulled out the survivor, who proved to be a ragged Mexican with a knife. The other was a French sailor. Driscoll shook the native angrily, whereupon the little demon swung the knife with vicious intent. But Driscoll held him at arm’s length, and the sweeps fell short, to the amazement and rage of his captive.

44“You miserable little chocolate-hided galoot, why couldn’t you wait for me?”

But the chocolate-hided only squirmed to get away. Driscoll glanced up the street whence the two had come. At the next corner, before a café, he saw things more promising. A ranchero with a drawn revolver was holding off a young officer in sky-blue uniform, while around them a swarm of natives and ten or eleven sailors were circling uneasily, as if waiting for some sign to begin hostilities. The joy of battle dilated the trooper’s nostrils.

“W’y, here I’ve been wasting time on a smaller edition.”

So saying, he flung aside his prisoner; and in another minute he was the centre of the main affair, and having an excellent time.