the lowering line, which ended
abruptly on their port and trailed off toward the horizon with a
telegraphy of deceit for the distant sail.

"You soldiers, colonel," he announced, "don't 'ave no monopoly on tricks
and gammon, _I'm_ a thinkin'. But I s'y, w'at if you and me go down
to my cabin and have a _noggin_?"

* * * * *

Thus _La Luz_ ran her last blockade, and came safely into port. She
reached Tampico some two days before the _Imperatrice Eugenie_.
Whereupon Din Driscoll, as he was called anywhere off the muster roll,
informed Don Anastasio that he would continue with him on into the
interior. And as seen already, Murguia humbly excused delay, though his
guest was not invited, not wanted, and cordially hated besides. That
meek smirk of Don Anastasio's was the absurdest thing in all psychology.

Yet what perhaps aggravated the old man most was curiosity. He craved to
know the errand of his young despot. In the doorway of the Tampico meson
he still hovered near, and ventured more questions.

"How was it that, that _you_ happened to be sent, senor?" he asked.

"Well now," observed the trooper, "there you go figuring it out that I
was sent at all."

"It must have been--uh, because you know Spanish. Are you a--a Texan,
Senor Coronel?"

"They raised me in Missouri," said the colonel. "But I learned to talk
Pan-American some on the Santa Fe trail. We had wagon trains out of
Kansas City when I was a good sight younger."

"I thought," said the old man suspiciously, "that perhaps you learned it
with Slaughter's army, along the Rio Grande. Slaughter, he's near
Brownsville yet, isn't he?"

"Is he?"

"With about twenty-five thousand men?"

"Lord, I've clean forgot, not having counted 'em lately."

"Where did you come from then, when you came to Mobile?"

"W'y, as I remember, from Sand Spring, Missouri, near the Arkansas
line."

A more obscure crossroads may not exist anywhere, but its bare mention
had a curious effect on the prying Don Anastasio. In the instant he
seemed to cringe before his late passenger.

"Then you--Your Mercy," he exclaimed, "belongs to Shelby's Brigade?"

The Missourian nodded curtly. His questioner was extraordinarily well
informed.

"And, and how many men has Shelby at Sand Spring?"

"Oh, millions. At least millions don't appear to stop 'em any."

"But senor, how, how many Confederates are there altogether west of the
Mississippi?"