burst into a terrific cannonading chorus. More, there was musketry,
vicious and sustained. There were troops deploying over the plain.
Something critical was happening. If it were the supreme rally of the
famishing Empire!

Driscoll stirred uneasily. He glanced at his outlaw. He thought of the
coach. To leave her with these ruffians? To miss a fight? Here was a
quandary!

"You are not going?" Rodrigo cried at him furiously. "Now, now," he
raged, "is the hour of triumph for the incarnation of popular
sovereignty. Go, I say, go, the Republic needs you!"

Until those words Rodrigo had held the situation. With them he lost it,
and Driscoll was master. And Driscoll grew serene, and very sweet of
manner. He began filling a cob pipe. A nod of his head indicated the
coach as a condition of his going.

"Look, look!" Rodrigo shouted. "Oh, que viva--they're running! We've
smoked them out! We've smoked them out!"

Driscoll swept the country with his glasses. Thousands of men were
running like frightened rabbits down the Cimatario slope, and spreading
as a fan over the grassy plain. Mountain pieces boomed farewell behind
them, until in abject panic they cast away carbines and scrambled the
faster. But other troops were pushing up the slope opposite the town,
and these were ordered ranks of infantry. Up and up they climbed, to
trench after trench, and the howitzers one by one stopped short their
roar. When Driscoll laid down the glasses, his face was white. Rodrigo's
glee turned to uncertainty.

"What--what----"

"Smoked out, you fool? We're the ones smoked out!"

"But those runaways?"

"Are our own men, ten thousand of 'em, raw conscripts to support our
batteries on the Cimatario."

"But the Cimitario?" Rodrigo knew by instinct the crucial importance of
the black cone.

"The Cimitario is taken by the Imperialists!"

Driscoll did not forget, however, the nearer contest, and as the Mexican
grew frantic, he was the more coolly indifferent.

"Max has everything his own way now," he added soothingly. "He can
either evacuate, or go around on the north side and thrash Escobedo."

But the Grays were clamoring for action. "By cracken, Din, hurry up
there!" yelled Cal Grinders.

Driscoll raised his palm, waving the fingers for patience. He scanned
the plain again. The Imperialist ranks were breaking. Hungry men rushed
on the besiegers' camps, snatching untouched breakfasts. The townsmen
poured out among the uniforms, and