The Missourian

by Eugene P. Lyle

  CHAPTER I

  MEAGRE SHANKS

  "... and should a man full of talk be justified?"--_Book of Job_.

  At the hotel in the City of Mexico where Driscoll stopped, the entrancewas big enough for a stage coach to drive through. But as to height, itdid not seem any too great for the attenuation of Mr. Daniel Boone, whotherein had propped himself at his ease, delightfully suggesting atropical gentleman lounging on a veranda under the live oaks. Oneshoulder was impinged on the casing of the archway, from which contacthis spare frame drifted out and downward, to the supporting base of oneboot sole. The other boot crossed it over, and the edge of the toerested on the pavement of the Calle de los Plateros, familiarlyso-called.

  Mr. Boone hailed from Boonville, but in Missouri, with Kentucky forancestral State, such was not a strained coincidence by any means. Anindividual there of the name of Boone, and a bit of geography likewisedistinguished, are bound to fall together occasionally. For instance, aflea's hop over the map, and Mr. Boone and Boonville both might haveclaimed the county of Boone. Under the circumstances, Daniel's Christianname was the most obviously Christian thing his parents could do, andfollowed (to precede thereafter) as a matter of course.

  Now, Missouri, in the beginning of the Civil War, was a very Flandersfor battles, and this sort of thing had ended by disturbing Mr. Booneconsiderably in the manipulation of an old hand-press, dubbed hisGutenberg, which worked with a lever and required some dozen processesfor each impression of the _Boonville Semi-Weekly Javelin_.Finally, when Joe Shelby and his pack of fire-eaters were raidingMissouri for the second time, Daniel plaintively laid down his stick inthe middle of an editorial on Black Republicans, and what should be doneto them. The shooting outside had gotten on his nerves at last. Thatblazing away of Missourians back home made him homesick. He was like therepressed boy called out by the gang to go coasting. And he went. Aneditorial by example, he went to do unto the Black Republicans somewhatpersonally. The Javelinier was a young man yet.

  "There's been rumors hitherto about the pen and the sword," he mused,"but type, now--that's _hot_!" Wherewith he emptied his cases intoa sack, took down a squirrel rifle, chased off his devil, locked in theGutenberg, and joined the raiders. Flinging his burden of metal atGeneral Shelby's feet, he said, "There sir, is _The Javelin_ inembryo for months to come. Now it's pi, which we'll sho'ly feed out bythe bullet weight, sir."

  From then on the newspaper man followed his proclivities and turnedscout, and it was a vigilant foe that could scoop him on the least oftheir movements, whether in the field or in their very stronghold, St.Louis itself.

  At the present moment Mr. Boone was retrieving a lost familiarity withgood cigars. There was a black one of the Valle Nacional in his mouth,and also in his mouth there was a wisp of straw. The steel-blue smokefloated out lazily, which his steel-blue eyes regarded withappreciation. It was an Elysium of indolence. The cigar, the not havingto kill anybody for a few minutes, and a place to lean against, thesewere content. Troubadour phrases droned soothingly in his brain. Ofcourse he had to apostrophize the snow-clads:

  "Popo, out there, grand, towering, whose frosty nose sniffs the vault ofheaven, whose mantle of fleecy cloud wraps him as the hoary locks of agiant, whose--Sho', if I had some copy paper now, I'd get you fixed_right_, you slippery old codger!"

  The wisp of straw hardly tallied with poesy of soul, nor did the lankfigure and lean face, nor the cavalry uniform, badly worn, though latelynew, nor yet the sagging belt with dragoon pistols. But the eyes did.Those eyes held the eloquence of the youth of a race. They were gentle,or they flashed, according to what passed within. It did not matternecessarily what might be going on without. They would as likely dartsparks during prayer meeting, or soften as a lover's mid the charge on abattery. Shaggy moustached Daniel, not yet thirty, was a scholar too, ofthe true old school, where dead languages lived to consort familiarlywith men, and neither had to be buried out of the world because of thecomradeship. Once, in Pompeii, Daniel blundered suddenly on that mosaicdoormat which bears the warning, "Cave canem"; and before he thought, heglanced anxiously around, half expecting a dog that could have barked atSaint Peter himself. From which it appears that the editor had traveled,and it would not be long in also appearing that he had gathered enoughof polite and variegated learning to fill a warehouse, in whichjunk-shop he was constantly rummaging, and bringing forth queerspecimens of speech wherewith to flower his inspirations.

  Streaming back and forth before the shops in lively Plateros street wereelegance and fashion and display, the languishing beauty of Spain, thebrilliancy of the Second Empire, the Teuton's martial strutting, theMexican's elation that Europe had come to him and with the money to payfor it. The toughened Boone gazed on the bright morning parade ofravishing shoppers and ogling cavaliers with the unterrified innocenceof a child, or of an American. He had the air of doing nothing, such asonly a newspaper man can have when really at work. He did not look asthough he were waiting for some one. But only a half-hour before he hadgotten from the saddle. He had just ridden four hundred and fifty milesfor the express purpose of waiting for someone now.

  Finally the keen, lazy eyes singled out an immense yellow horse andrider from among the luxurious turnouts. "Jack!" he exclaimed gladly."The Storm Centre," he improvised, as the new comer approached,"straight as Tecumseh, a great bronzed Ajax, mighty thewed, as strong ofhand as of digestion--w'y, bless my soul, the boy looks pow'fuldejected, knocked plum' galley-west! I never saw him look like thatbefore."

  Man and horse had come all night from Cuernavaca. But Din Driscoll nevertired, wherefore Boone knew that _something_ was the matter. At thedoorway Driscoll flung himself from the saddle, gave the bridle to aporter of the hotel, and was following, his face the picture of gloom,when he heard the words, "How' yuh, Jack?" His brow cleared in theinstant. "Shanks!" he cried, gripping the other's hand.

  Mr. Boone untwined his boots and for the first time during a half-hourstood in them. As he shook Driscoll's hand, he shook his own head, andat last observed, in the way of continuing a conversation, "It was thealmightiest soaking rain, Din, for the land's sake!" And he shook hishead again, quite mournfully.

  Driscoll had not seen Mr. Boone since leaving Shelby's camp back inArkansas. He naturally wished to know what was being talked about. Buthis woeful friend only kept on, "It wet all Texas, heavier'n a sponge,and," he added, "they ain't coming."

  "Shanks! You don't mean----"

  "Don't I? But I do. They're a surrendered army. The wholeTrans-Mississippi Department of 'em, pretty near. But not quite, bearthat in----"

  "But the rain? What in----"

  "What did you come down here for, I'd like to know? To say how theTrans-Mississippi wouldn't surrender, didn't you? Well?"

  "Oh, go on!"

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

  Mr. Boone believed in trouble as an antidote for trouble. When he hadstirred 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 god we put up in Kirby Smith's place,who so dashingly would lead us on to Mexico?"

  "Buckner, yes."

  "Him, Simon Bolivar B., whose gold lace glittered as though washed bythe dew and wiped with the sunshine----"

  "Now, Shanks, drop it!" Driscoll was referring to the editorial penwhich Mr. Boone would clutch and get firmly in hand with the least riseof emotion. Against his other conversation, the clutching always becameat 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 fiftythousand, should march into Shrevepoht and--and _surrender_, bythunder!"

  "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 A
rkansas,after that conference with the other generals? Then you'll see what_he_ does. He proclaims things, on wall paper. The Missouri CavalryDivision will march to Shrevepoht, will depose Smith for good, will headoff the surrender, will lead the other divisions on to Mexico. And westarted to do it too. And then, and then--it rained. Rained, sir, tillour trains and guns were mired, and we couldn't budge! And all the timewe knew that regiment after regiment was stacking arms off there atShrevepoht. Did Little Joe rave? Opened Job his mouth? He did. Hisfluency gave the rain pointers. I sho'ly absorbed some myself, me, thathave language tanks of my own. Well, I reckon all our hearts pretty nearbroke. But we had our Missouri general and our Missouri governor, andthe 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 homelesscomrades would get. But Mr. Boone did not notice. He had only stretchedhis canvas, a big one, and there was a picture to paint. His long bodybegan to straighten out, and his eyes glowed. From Xenophon to Irving'sAstoria, from Hannibal crossing the Alps to Marching Through Georgia, heransacked both romance and the classics 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? Ofcoh'se, you're one of 'em. You're a chunk of brimstone, yourself. Andyou'll maybe rec'lect they did some fighting off and on. There was thatraw company, f'r instance--boys, hardly a one broke in his yoke of oxenyet--and they hadn't even gotten their firearms, but they took a batterywith their naked hands, and got themselves all tangled up in the fierywoof of death. But you'll not be rec'lecting that that there Brigadeever _lost_ a gun. And those raids, Din, back into Missouri, ahandful back into the Federal country, when men dozed and dropped fromtheir saddles and still did not wake up, and some went clean daft forwant of sleep, and fighting steady all around the clock too, fair andsquare over into Kansas! And there was the night they buried eighthundred!"

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

  "And," he went on, gaining momentum, "I don't reckon you'll beforgetting Arkansas, and the ague and rattlesnakes? And how thesmall-pox swooped down on that camp of cane shacks? And how the quininegave out, and--and the _tobacco_? Lawd!--And how those boys forgothow to sew patches, their rags being so far gone! And how they madebridles out of bark, and coffee out of corn! And how they kneaded doughin old rubber blankets and cooked it on rocks! Well, Jack, there theywere, in Arkansas like that, and the War was over at last, and Missouriwas just a waiting for 'em. And then, to think that they had to facesquare around another way entirely! Din, you'll just try to imagine thatthere 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 thingthey didn't go back. Think of their neighbors across the Kansas line,getting ready for 'em with every sort of legal persecution under thesun, and carpet-bag judges to help! Outlaw decrees? Well, I reckon thosedecrees will make a few outlaws, all right, and there'll beunsurrendered Johnny Rebs ten years from now. Shelby's boys had the lookof it. Your own Jackson county regiment would have flared intodesperadoes at sight of a United States marshal. They were all in justthat sort o' mood, as they turned their backs on Missouri. And afterfour years, too! But there, it's a stiff wind that has no turning, socheer up! _They_ did, as soon as that deluge got done with and theywere headed for Mexico, one thousand of 'em. Soldiers mus'n't repine,you know. For them, Fate arrays herself in April's capricious sunshine."

  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 Iwant to tell you first that Texas is a handsome state. We--they--wereconsiderable interested all the way through it."

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

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

  "Fat--who's she?"

  "Now you wait. They've got heaps to do in Texas yet, before they get toFat Jenny. First, they helped themselves out of their own commissarydepartments, horses, provisions trains, cannon, everything. Decentlyuniformed for the first time, and the War over! You should of seen 'em,a forest of Sharpe's carbines, a regular circulating library of BeecherBibles. There were four Colts and a dragoon sabre and thousands ofrounds of ammunition to each man. They had fighting tools to spare, andthey cached a lot of the stuff up in the state of Coahuila. And theyfed, and got sleek. This ain't editorial, my boy. It's God's own truth.Adventures every step of the way only did 'em good. They saved wholetowns from renegade looters by just mentioning Shelby's name. Theyfought all day and danced all night. San Antone was the best. There theygathered in generals, governors, senators, and even Kirby Smith, allyearning 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 ominousof inspiration in his eyes.

  "At the Rio Grande," he said, solemnly, "they crossed out of theConfederacy forever, so it was meet and right that there, in midstream,they should consign their old battle-flag to the past. They had notsurrendered it, but as a standard it existed for those gallant hearts nomore. Woman's loyal hand had bestowed it. Coy victory had caressed itsfolds mid the powder pall and horror of ten score desperate fields. Andnow it floated over the last of its followers, ere the waves shouldclose over it forevermore. With bowed heads, they gathered sadlyabout----"

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

  "All right, Din," Boone answered hastily. "Yes, I know, we all got kindof weepy too. No wonder Colonel Slayback wrote some verses. Reckon youcan 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 thesacred 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 "IronBrigade," and no company of errant knights, perhaps, ever had such ajunketing as those same lusty troopers. No sooner did they set foot inthe enchanted land of roses than a damsel in distress, the RepublicaMexicana herself, came to them for succor. Or more literally, adissident governor, backed by the authority of President Juarez, offeredShelby military control of the three northern states and grants in thefabulously rich Sonora mines, if he would hang high his shield andrecruit his countrymen in the republican cause. There is little doubtthat General Shelby could have raised an army and become henceforth apower in Mexico, for Washington would have smiled on the undertaking andall Texas would have afforded a base of supplies. But the Missourian'sRound Table voted it down. They awaited Maximilian's reply whichDriscoll was to bring. Perhaps, too, they would have a chance to wagewar against the United States again, and that was better than beingsmiled on.

  Henceforth they fought the forlorn damsel herself, fought every foot ofthe way through desert mesquite thick enough to daunt a tarantula. Therewere guerrillas, robbers, spies, deserters, and Indian tribes. It wasone eternal ambush, incessantly a skirmish, often a pitched battle. Theysaved a French garrison. They rescued a real maiden by a night attack onan hacienda stronghold, and did it with strictly de rigueur dash andchivalry. Once or twice they were even stung, by some "langourousdusky-eyed scorpion of a saynorita" to fight among themselves,cavalryman's code. Daniel was never one to spoil a romance by mentioningthat a tropical maid was faced like a waffle-iron, though more thanlikely she was. Finally, as a last stroke, Fat Jenny promised to shootShelby 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 f
or Jeanningros, the French general at Monterey,who'd heard about those negotiations with the Republica. But Shelbyformed in battle line, to storm his old city, and at the same time sentword 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 takeback 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. Insteadof fifty thousand, we're only one thousand, I know. But there arehundreds and hundreds of Americans down here like us, and all of 'emwanting service. There's that colony just starting at Cordova near VeraCruz. But they'd fight, if there was an American to lead them, and moreyet 'ud come from the States. Quicker'n that, Old Joe will have adivision."

  Driscoll ruefully shook his head. "Maximilian wants us," he said, "ifwe'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 theproposed ignominy would not come. Finally, he dug from his pocket abright new gold coin, twenty pesos, and contemplated reflectively theside that bore Maximilian's effigy.

  "I've got the cub repohter's superstition," he said at last. "You getyour cards printed," here he tapped the coin significantly, "and you'resure to lose your job--still we might of helped him."

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

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