ath the swarm as saplings under an
avalanche. Driscoll sprang up and gazed. Through eddying swirls he still
could see red sleeved arms reach out, and lightning rays of steel, and
half-naked fleeting creatures go down, and never a jot of the curse's
speed abate.

"Lordy, but Old Joe should 'a seen it!" he fairly shouted. He was
thinking of Shelby, of the Old Brigade back in Missouri; daredevils,
every one of them.

Don Tiburcio had sighted the vengeful horde from afar, and had
recognized them, since he was, in fact, one of their scouts. They were
the Contra Guerrillas, the Cossacks, the scourge wielded by the French
Intervention and the Empire. And they were Don Tiburcio's cue to
loyalty. For seeing them, he began firing on his late friends, the
brigands. Yet he spared their Capitan. At the first alarm Fra Diavolo
had vaulted astride his black horse, and Tiburcio darting out, had
caught his bridle, and turned him into the dry bed of the arroyo. Others
of the fugitives tried to escape by this same route, but Tiburcio fought
them off with clubbed rifle, and in such occupation was observed by him
who led the Cossacks, who was a terrible old man, and a horseman to give
the eye joy. At the gully he swerved to one side, and let the hurricane
pass on by.

"Sacred name of thunder," he cursed roundly, "a minute later and----"

"Si, mi coronel," the faithful Tiburcio acknowledged gratefully, "Your
Excellency came just in time."

The colonel of Contra Guerrillas frowned a grim approval for his scout's
handiwork of battered skulls. He was a man of frosted visage, a grisly
Woden. The hard features were more stern for being ruggedly venerable.
His beard was wiry, hoary gray, through whose billowy depth a long black
cigar struck from clenched teeth. If eyes are windows of the soul, his
were narrow, menacing slits, loopholes spiked by bristling brows. Two
deep creases between the eyes furrowed their way up and were lost under
an enormously wide sombrero. This sombrero was low crowned, like those
worn farther to the south, and ornately flowered in silver. His chest
was crossed with braid, cords of gold hung from the right shoulder to
the collar, and the sleeves were as glorious as a bugler's. His
brick-red jacket fell open from the neck, exposing the whitest of linen.
His boots were yellow, his spurs big Mexican discs. Altogether the blend
in him of the precise military and the easy ranchero was curiously
picturesque. But Colonel D