Yes, and here was Lopez putting on the final touch. Here he was, the traitor, pronouncing the death sentence, and poor impotent Don Tiburcio gnawing his baffled rage, as one would say of a villain. The execution was to take place the very next morning. His Majesty the Emperor would be asked to approve, afterward.
"È un peccato che se ne va con l'acqua benedetta." --_Machiavelli_.
The Storm Centre looked round, about and above. He was as a fly in a bottle. A massive rough-hewn door, jammed tight, sealed him within adobe walls two feet thick. There was one window, cross-barred, as high as his chin, and only large enough to frame his head. They had brought him to the carcel, or dungeon, of the hacienda, where peons were constrained to docility. A wide masonry bench against the wall approximated a couch, but it was as blocked ice. By the flickering of a lone tallow dip, Din Driscoll noted these things with every sense delicately attuned to strategy. But his verdict was unpromising.
The adobe was built among the stables that bordered on the pasture, and when not needed as a calabozo, it served snugly for the administrador's best horse. From the one stall came a tentative whinny. Driscoll jumped with delight. "Demijohn! W'y, you good old scoundrel, you!" The night before, he remembered, he had seen the horse bedded here. "Say howdy as loud as you want," he cried, slapping him fondly on the flank, "you'll not betray us. _That's_ been done already."
Driscoll was cavalryman to the bone, and it heartened him unaccountably to find his horse. If, only, he could have his pistols too! Ever since the Federals had cut him off from his furloughs home, those black ugly navies were next to the nearest in his affections. The nearest was the buckskin charger. And now, only the buckskin was left, which simply made the dilemma more poignant. The condemned man gazed critically at the walls, the rafters, the ground, and shook his head. Supposing a chance for escape, could he bring himself to leave Demijohn behind? He got his pipe to going, sat down, and frowned ruefully at the candle.
"I don't want to be shot!" he burst out suddenly, with a plaintive twang. Then he grinned. The boy still in him had prompted the absurdity. And the rough warrior had laughed at it. Boy and warrior faced each other, either surprised that the other existed. The boy flushed resentfully at the veteran's contemptuous grunt. His eyes still had the boy's naïvely inquisitive greeting to the world before him. Next, quite abruptly, the warrior knew a bitterness against himself. If he could, but once, whimper as the lad about to be soundly strapped! He took no pride in his irony, nor in his hardened indifference to the visage of death. How far, how very far, had the few past years of strife carried him from the youngster who used to gaze so eagerly, so expectantly, out on life!