ent to watch only Y'r Mercy, Y'r Mercy's thousand pardons."

"The devil!"

"And with Y'r Mercy's permission, I was to kill Y'r Mercy at the first
chance. But since Y'r Mercy has changed sides----"

"Now look here, who--who put you up to this business, I want to know?"

The man shrugged his shoulders. He only knew that a senor chaparro had
sent him.

"A short senor?" Driscoll repeated. "Then we might call you a Shorter
Yet, and maybe you know where this Republica is hiding out?"

The Indito brightened. "That's why I'm here, senor. I'll take Y'r Mercy
to the Citizen General Regules."

At the name Driscoll frowned involuntarily, but laughed as he again
remembered that he no longer shared the Imperialist hates.

"Regules?" he repeated. "But we all thought he was dead, since the last
time we scoured his mountains."

"That the Virgin would have let me kill Y'r Mercy before then!" said the
Indito regretfully. "But no matter, Y'r Mercy will discover that the
citizen general is still alive."

And so he was. They found him in the wildest of the wild region of the
Sierra Madre del Sur, far away beyond the Rio de las Balsas, beyond
Michoacan, in the impassable tierra caliente of the Pacific slope. The
Indians here were the Pintos, who knew naught of the world outside, and
owned allegiance to none but a grizzly old dictator, royally described
as the Panther of the South. One thing was certain, the Empire could
never follow Regules to the fever and ambush of the Panther's marshy
realm, and Regules was hard pressed indeed when he sought such
protection. But he was there now, in that last refuge of Liberalism,
alone, wounded, fever stricken, emaciated, but undaunted. Driscoll found
him so, and became his first recruit.

For the moment Regules had no army, but armies were only weapons
brandished by the real principals in the duel. Over battle and rout and
slaughter the two chiefs would glare each at the other, blade in hand
and panting, but either ever ready for the stroke that should thrust
through the army to the heart of its general. Such a struggle needed
only antiquity and a bard to be Homeric. No Greek could equal either
champion in cunning, nor Trojan in prowess, nor both in grim persistence
and rugged hate. It was truly a fight to have a hand in, and with big,
lusty zest, the Storm Centre bounded into the lists. He leaped backward
into the age of colossal, naked emotions, which strove as great veined
giants with a r