fiance. Driscoll noticed an expectant and wolfish look in his
colonel's eyes. Mendez was a strikingly handsome and gallant Indian, but
his expectancy now was not for battle. It was for the battle's sequel.
Michel Ney and a squad of Chasseurs had just brought him an Imperial
packet from the City, and the packet contained general orders very much
to his Indian taste.

The fight was a rousing one, and Driscoll enjoyed himself for the first
time in many days. His Mexicans behaved as he could have wished, better
than he had hoped. At the start in the familiar uproarious hell, he
missed the hard set, exultant faces of his old Jackson county troop, and
seeing only tawny visages through the smoke and hearing only foreign
yells, he felt a queer twinge of homesickness. But he was at once
ashamed, for the humble little chocolate centaurs whom he had been set
to train were dying about him with lethargic cynicism, just as they were
bidden. Wearing a charm, either the Virgin's picture in a tin frame, or
the cross, they might have worn the crescent. They were as effective as
Moslems. They were ruthless fatalists.

Michel Ney also spent a diverting half-hour. He had lingered for the
fray. Waving a broken sabre snapped off at the hilt, he charged with
Gallic verve and got himself knocked under his kicking and wounded
horse, and pummeled by Liberal muskets on every side. Driscoll saw, and
straightened out matters. Handing the Frenchman a whole sabre, he
reproved him soberly, as a carpenter might an apprentice caught using a
plane for a ripsaw.

After it was over, the living of the enemy were prisoners. The victors
marched them to Uruapan near by, because it was charged that at this
place two of the captured Liberals, Generals Arteaga and Salazar, had
lately shot two Imperialists. Here, in their turn, they were promptly
executed.

Driscoll heard the volleys, ran to the spot, and saw the last horrid
spasms.

"What--what----"

Ney turned on him a sickened look.

"Don't you know, it's the new decree."

"What new decree? These dead men were prisoners of war. If murderers,
they weren't tried."

"It's the decree I brought from Maximilian, the decree of general
amnesty."

Driscoll glared fiercely at such a jest, but to his utter amazement Ney
was quite in earnest.

He who had commanded the shooting squad stooped over the corpses, a
smoking pistol in his hand. Now he glanced up at Driscoll. "Pues, si
senores," he said, "of amnesty