“General Taylor,” snarled Brinton, “sent me here with some fool message or other. It was congratulatory, I believe, and therefore hypocritical. I’ve forgotten it. Because it was too good to waste on the man who has tried to reap where Taylor sowed--the jackal that seeks to ape our lion. And I left my dress uniform at the _fonda_, back there, too. Why should I put it on just to humor old Fuss-and-Feathers?” By this time fifty officers were clambering down from the dais or running up from the edges of the cleared space to silence the man who had spoiled their patron’s day of homage. Brinton heeded their approach not at all. Shifting in his saddle he faced the throng of gaping natives. “Mexicanos!” he called in Spanish. “You have been conquered. But it was by General Taylor. Not by this overdressed old incompetent who has stolen Taylor’s laurels. He--” The harangue ended abruptly. A dozen hands were upon the speaker. A dozen hands dragged him from the saddle. A dozen hands itched to close on his throat and to choke out every possibility of future insult. But there was no need. After a bare second of feeble struggle Brinton lay inert and moveless in his captors’ grasp. “Good Lord!” exclaimed an officer, leaning over him in wonder. “The man’s--the man’s _asleep_!” CHAPTER II DISGRACE Winfield Scott, the “general commanding” the United States armies, sat in the high-ceiled living-room of his temporary headquarters. Night had come--the night of the day that was to have marked so elaborate a tribute to the United States in the person of the general commanding. The general had discarded his gaudy dress uniform in favor of a fatigue suit that left his chest unpadded and allowed far more waist room for a no longer gracefully restricted circumference. He sat at the head of a deal table whereon burned two sconces of candles. The center of the room, where stood the table, was softly alight, but ceiling and walls were in wavering gloom. The general was writing, handling his white quill-pen with wondrous facility, considering the size and gnarled condition of his hands. He came to the end of a page, reached ponderously across the table for a perforated box, and carefully sanded the ink-scrawled sheet; then started on another page. His rubicund face wore a scowl, and his shaven lip-corners were almost ludicrously drawn down. At the first line of the new page he paused and looked up from under his bushy, white brows, threateningly as might a charging bull. An orderly stood in the dim-lit doorway opposite him. “Captain Grant, sir,” reported the orderly, saluting. A grunt from Scott and the man withdrew. Presently in his place entered a thick-set officer of middle height, clean-shaven, and evidently still in the late twenties or very early thirties. “Well?” rapped out Scott. “He is awake, sir,” replied Captain Grant, “and quite sober again. I made the inquiries you ordered.” “Well?” again demanded the general.