gth and trained it into the power of a brigade. He did wonders
through the idea, pleasantly instilled, that much of the fun of fighting
lies in the winning, and he demolished, as an absurd fetich, the idea
that the hunted men of Regules were doomed never to win.

Thus he labored with the Inditos, his terrible little fatalists in
combat. There were enough to choose from, since by now the tide of
desertion was changing toward the Republic. The problem of mounts in
time solved itself. The French began selling their horses rather than
transport them back to Europe, and these being declared contraband of
war by the Liberal government, were complacently taken away from their
owners without even Juarez script in payment. The question of arms
proved more troublesome, but the answer at last was even more
satisfactory. For the besieged at Queretero, Driscoll's troop later
became some unfamiliar dragon hissing an incessant flame of poisonous
breath. This was due to a strange and mystical weapon which not only
carried a ball farther than any rifle known before, but sixteen of them,
one after the other. The strange and mystical weapon multiplied a lone
man into a very genii of death, until the Missourian's twelve hundred
were more to be dreaded than many battalions.

The repeating rifles, it may be explained, formed a part of the cache
which General Shelby had made on crossing into Mexico. He had taken
them, among other things, from the Confederate depositories in Texas.
Driscoll knew of the cache through Boone, and by infinite patience had
it brought into Michoacan. A solitary Indito journeyed eight hundred
miles unnoticed with some seeming fragments of scrap iron. Other vagos
were in front of him. Others followed. And these passed yet others,
empty handed, trudging in the opposite direction. So an arsenal came to
the Sierra Madre del Sur all the way from the Rio Grande, and each and
every cavalier, whether miserable ranchero or veteran Missourian, became
an engine of destruction, good for a fusillade of forty shots without
the biting of a cartridge, for sixteen from his rifle, for six from each
of his revolvers, and after these, good for terrific in-fighting with
his dragoon sabre. It was no marvel that Driscoll loved such a troop,
but the wonder lay in his smile, soft and purring and far-away, as he
stroked his murderous darling.

Colonel Daniel Boone, chief of scouts, was harassed nearly to insomnia
over the change in his frie